You probably do not want to download more voices than you will use. If you install voices for different languages it will also download additional files Mac will need to support those languages. The additional voices will take some time to download. Check the checkbox for the voices you wish to install and click OK.Click on the System Voice combobox and click on Customize.Open the Apple menu and select System Preferences.Mac OS has a large number of high quality voices available from Nuance in many languages and dialects. It is an incredibly realistic voice but there are other options for text to speech voices in Mac. Selecting a Different Reading VoiceĪlex is the default reading voice on the Mac OS. You can adjust the voice and speech rate in the Dictation and Speech options in System Preferences.

The default hotkey for TTS is Option+Escape. To stop the speech, type the same key combination again. Now each time you type this key combination, your Mac will read aloud any text you have selected.

Choose one modifier key - Command, Control, Option, or Shift - plus one other key of your choice.

Check the option “Speak selected text when the key is pressed.

To start, open the System Preferences panel under the Apple icon and click on Dictation and Speech.

It is a simpler option than VoiceOver to use for reading e-texts for people with learning disabilities. The text to speech option also works in the Apple Calculator to make it self voicing. Mac OS X also has a Text to Speech Option which will read selected text when the user presses a user defined Shortcut Key. Comparable programs that VoiceOver will work in are Pages (an Apple word processor) and Preview (the default PDF viewer for Mac).

VoiceOver will not read in Microsoft Office for Mac or in Adobe Acrobat Reader for Mac. The hotkey for starting VoiceOver for all Mac version since OS 10.5 is Command+F5. It was designed for people who are blind so it may be too feature rich for people just wanting to read text in a document. It reads all elements of the window and uses specific keystrokes and trackpad swipes to interact with menus and the contents of programs. VoiceOver is a full function screen reader somewhat similar to using JAWS.

Text to speech for mac software