Sound Effects quickstart

We’ll also use the dotenv library to load our API key from an environment variable.

pip install elevenlabs
pip install python-dotenv

Install the ElevenLabs CLI. Homebrew (macOS) and Scoop (Windows) are recommended.

Homebrew (macOS)

brew install elevenlabs/tap/elevenlabs

Scoop (Windows)

scoop bucket add elevenlabs https://github.com/elevenlabs/scoop-bucket
scoop install elevenlabs

npm

npm install -g @elevenlabs/cli

curl

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/elevenlabs/cli/releases/latest/download/elevenlabs-cli-installer.sh | sh

Working with an AI coding assistant? Run elevenlabs generate-skills in your project to write a SKILL.md for every command group into skills/, so your assistant knows the CLI's full surface without you pasting docs. Use --output-dir to put them elsewhere. This reads the CLI's own embedded API definition, so it needs no API key and works offline — and it stays in step with whichever CLI version you have installed.

Then authenticate — this opens your browser to authorize the CLI:

elevenlabs auth login

Create a new file named example.py or example.mts, depending on your language of choice and add the following code:

# example.py
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from elevenlabs.client import ElevenLabs
from elevenlabs.play import play

load_dotenv()

elevenlabs = ElevenLabs(
  api_key=os.getenv("ELEVENLABS_API_KEY"),
)
audio = elevenlabs.text_to_sound_effects.convert(text="Cinematic Braam, Horror")

play(audio)

Then run it:

python example.py

You should hear your generated sound effect playing through your speakers.

Generate a sound effect and save it to a file:

elevenlabs text-to-sound-effects convert \
  --text "Cinematic Braam, Horror" \
  --output sound-effect.mp3

Open sound-effect.mp3 to hear the result.