Otherwise, available text items in the current window are spoken for example, if Mail is the current window, an email message is read. If text is selected when you press the key, the selected text is spoken. To stop the speaking, press the key again. To have your Mac start speaking, press the specified key. To choose a different key, click Change Key, press one or more modifier keys (Command, Shift, Option or Control) together with another key, then click OK. Select the “Speak selected text when the key is pressed” tickbox.īy default, speaking is enabled when you press Option-Esc. On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Accessibility, then click Speech. Most useful for: People who find reading a challenge so try the text to speech to either read for you or to read along with the text. Its key feature is: Get your Mac to read out text so instead of reading a document, PDF or website you can have it read aloud to you. One of these tools is a text to speech tool that can read out text in a voice you choose. I've written about this in my " Setting the Mac text to speech default system voice tutorial." In the end all of the voices still sound computer generated, but the new "Alex" voice is very good, and I also like the older "Vicki" voice from time to time.Īs a final note, if you're a programmer, and want to expreriment with Apple's speaking and speech recgonition technology, here's a link to my " Mac text to speech, and speech to text tutorial." Be careful, though, or you too may fall down the rabbit hole.Cost: Free | Platforms: Built in tool in a Mac Laptop / Desktop.Īpple laptops and Desktops have a number of built-in tools in System Preferences. If you don't like the default Mac text to speech voice, you can change it to other voices. This Mac text to speech capability is also available in the TextEdit editor, but it's not available in the Mac OS X Preview app. For instance, I use the Firefox and Google Chrome browsers much more than I use Safari, but when I want to use this "text to speech" capability, I know I need to use Safari. In this article I've specifically said "Use Safari" because this text to speech reading capability doesn't seem to be available in all browsers or applications. Mac text to speech - reading in other browsers and applications The voices still have room fror improvement, but from a technical standpoint, wow. (I wish the Apple Remote would make this stop, but it doesn't. Fortunately you can mute the Mac voice as it is reading/speaking.)Įvery time I use this text to speech technology it just blows me away. (You may need to adjust your volume to hear it.)Īny time you want to stop the system as it's reading, just follow the same steps, but choose the "Stop Speaking" menu item from the popup menu. The system should begin reading the text to you, using the default system voice. On the popup menu that appears, select the "Speech" menu item, then click "Start Speaking". Right-click on the text you have highlighted.Highlight a sentence or two of text (using the typical click and drag technique you'd normally use to copy some text).As an example, here's a link to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland on the Project Gutenberg website. Open a web page in the Safari web browser.To hear your Mac "speak" some text to you, just follow these steps: One of the easiest ways to experiment with the Mac "text to speech" capability is to open the Mac Safari web browser, highlight some text, and tell the system to read the text to you, using the built in Mac text to speech system. As I keep diving deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole that is the Mac OS X text to speech (voice) capability, I'm reminded that one cool thing you can do is have your Mac OS X system read text to you. Here's a quick example of how to get your Mac to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to you.
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