Selecting A Default Mac Text To Speech Voice
To select a default Mac “text to speech” voice, just follow these steps:
1) Click the “Apple” menu on the Mac menu bar
2) Click “System Preferences…”
3) Click the “Speech” icon:
Figure 1: Mac OS X System Preferences, Speech button
4) Click the “Text to Speech” tab:
Figure 2: The Mac OS X System Preferences “Text to Speech” panel
5) Select from the System Voice options that are available.
What Is Text To Speech Converter
This tool helps you to easily convert your written text into speech or voice. You can hear the audio recitation of the text instantly. Whether a single character or big paragraph you will be able to listen to it.
How does it work?
The text to voice tool uses a speech synthesizing technique in which the text is at first converted into its phonetic form. Our database already has the human audio for all the phonetics or you can simply say transcriptions. Matching phonetics and their sounds are adjoined. Therefore, as a result, you can hear the transcripted voice.
Say Hello To Anna And Serena
I admit it: I am a bad reader. I dont enjoy much sitting down and reading a long text. Worst are my skills, reading on a screen.
Sure, great typography like on this page can greatly improve the reading experience. But I consider myself to be on the auditory learners side. I can listen for hours to podcasts. Other peoples shelves are bursting with books. My bookshelf is my extensive audible library.
For this reason I love the built in Text to speech feature in Mac OS X. With the Update on Leopard Alex showed on my drive. A great natural sounding male voice. And with Lion a whole family of great voices in many international languages became available to Mac users for free.
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Getting List Of Mac Text
The mac command say can specify the voice used with the -v flag.
say -v Alex "compile completed, put your swords down."
The available voices can be seen in System Preferences/Speech/Text to Speech. How can I get this list programmatically?
This is the list of available voices:
say -v '?'
for voice in `say -v '?' | awk ''` do say -v "$voice" "Hello, my name is $voice." done
Python Version, courtesy of Barry Wark:
from AppKit import NSSpeechSynthesizerprint NSSpeechSynthesizer.availableVoices
Shell Version, no hack too cheap!
ls /System/Library/Speech/Voices | sed 's/.SpeechVoice$//'AgnesAlbertAlexBadNewsBahhBellsBoing...
- Sep 29, 2009 at 0:44
- I’m sure you could call it through PyObjC, which is included with Mac OS X 10.5 and above .Sep 29, 2009 at 0:48
- you’re right, I’ve copied the incanation below… thanks a bunch!!
It is worth going through several of the voices before deciding on one. There is a huge variation in quality.
For example, Tom sounds a bit impatient, but way more realistic than Alex. And some of the British voices are great.
Using say -v ‘?’ gives you a list of the installed voices plus some sample sentences that give you an idea what to expect of the voice. You have to go through preferences to install most of the really good voices, but they come with a Compact voice file that lets you hear what each voice sounds like before you actually download them.
How Do I Use The Text To Speech
Once Text to Speech has been set up,
Words are not highlighted in any way as they are read. If this is important, you would need to use a specialist Text to Speech program, such as:
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How To Convert Text Into Speech
Our English text to speech tool is very easy to use. Just type some text, select the language, the voice and the speech style and emotion, then hit the Play button. Set back and wait for a few seconds while our AI algorithm does its text to speech magic to convert your text into an awesome voice over. When it is all done, you can click the download button to download your voice over as an mp3 file.
Best Text To Speech For Mac
Whether you prefer articles read to you while you do something else or trying to grasp a new foreign language or even for specially abled students, TTS has proved to be very useful.
In our previous articles we saw some of the best text to speech apps for Windows and Android. And today, we take a look at some of the best TTS options available for Macs.
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To Activate Mac Text To Speech:
Open System Preferences, click Accessibility, then Speech. .
Select the “Speak selected text when the key is pressed” checkbox. You can accept the default key combination or choose your own by clicking Change Key.
Select the text you want to hear and press the key combination to have your Mac start speaking. Press the key combination again to stop text to speech.
This video demonstrates how to activate and use the text to speech utility on a Mac.
How To Enable And Set Up Dictation
Before you can use Dictation to enter text using voice, the first thing you need to do is enable Dictation from the Settings. Heres how
1. Head over to the System Preferences, and select Keyboard.
2. In the Keyboard settings tab, tap on Dictation and select the On radio button next to Dictation.
Once enabled, you can further change related settings for the same, like the input language, shortcut to initiate Dictation, and the input microphone.
1. Change input language hit the dropdown button next to Language to choose your preferred input language. In case you do not see your language in the list, tap the Add Language button to search and add the language.
2. Set shortcut to trigger Dictation to set the trigger shortcut to initiate Dictate, tap the dropdown button next to Shortcut and select a trigger option from the list. Alternatively, you can also set a custom key as the trigger for Dictation.
3. Set input microphone tap on the dropdown button below the microphone to select the input microphone.
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Get Your Favorite Macos Text
Quick tips are random posts regarding something I discovered on my way to something bigger. They usually get longer than quick would imply, for which I refuse to apologize.
This is one of those things that is likely common knowledge, but I stumbled across it accidentally today while doing some studying on web accessibility.
A couple OS releases ago the list of installed voices available to the say command changed, and some of my favorites disappeared. Id always been partial to Zarvox for script notifications.
say -v Zarvox "well this is a fine pickle"
And then Zarvox was suddenly gone, and I just assumed Apple had killed off the majority of the novelty voices. It turns out, however, that its really easy to restore them .
First, Open VoiceOver Utility . Select Speech in the left sidebar and choose the Voices tab. Next to any options listed there is a dropdown for selecting the voice used by Voice Over. At the bottom of that dropdown, select Customize.
Check the boxes for all the voices you want to add, and when you confirm it will download and install them.
Zarvox lives.
Actual Voice Over users definitely already know this, but as an aside Ill point out that you can correct pronunciation in this pane as well.1
System Voice And Speaking Rate
This option lets you set the voice and speech rate of your Mac, as well as preview your changes. By default, your Mac uses a voice called Alex.
It might only look like there’s a handful of voices available, but if you click Customize, you can select to download additional voice packs for a wide variety of different languages.
Each voice pack is roughly 300500Mb each so it may take a little time depending on your internet connection speed.
Tip: Want your Mac to sound like Siri? If you’re in the US, it’s Samantha. For UK residents, Siri’s name is Daniel.
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Top 6 Speech To Text Software For Mac For Mac
Verdict: Dragon Professional Individual speech to text software for Mac helps you create a personalized written speech that can be used at any time for any purpose. It can help you improve your confidence and speak better in public. It will help you build a network of friends who will listen to your speeches whenever you need a good personal writing project.
The speech recognition technology used in Dragon Professional enables it to be compatible with many different text editors like the Microsoft Word, Outlook Express, and Adobe Acrobat Professional.
The software was created by Bill Parks, a famous speech writer who is also an instructor at Dragon Academy, a New York City training institute that teaches people how to become speechwriters and speakers.
How Do I Convert Text To Audio On My Computer
With Narakeet you can use the best AI voice generators in 70+ languages directly from your browser, or any Internet connected device. Start using our realistic voice generator free, to create lifelike text to speech. Just open the text-to-audio tool, enter the text you want to convert to speech, and click the Create Audio button.
Narakeet helps you create narrated videos quickly, using text-to-speech to turn Powerpoint presentations and into engaging videos.It is under active development, so things change frequently. Keep up to date:RSS,Slack,,,,,TikTok
Users
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How To Convert Text To Spoken Audio In Mac Os X The Easy Way
If you have a lengthy amount of text to read or review that you dont have time to actually read, another alternative is to convert that text into an audio track. This is kind of like making an audiobook out of any text block, and it can be as long or as short as you need it to be. Of course it sounds complex to convert text into audio files, but its not at all, Mac OS X makes it extremely simple. In a few moments, youll have a fresh MP3 audio file from the origin document, added to iTunes that you can then sync to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Sounds awesome right?
It is, heres how to use text to speech on the Mac to speak selected text and save that spoken audio as an audio file, and it works it in all versions of Mac OS X.
Why Do You Need Narration In Your Videos
You should narrate your videos for a few reasons. A narration will make your video more understandable, give it a more professional feel and help the action points ring through. Video with a text to speech narration is a great way to explain technology in an easy way, especially if youre not a speaker or if youre not comfortable talking on camera.
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Best Speech To Text Software For Mac In 2022
By Robin Owens 22 days ago, Apps and Software
Speech To Text Software For Mac for Mac is a great asset for just about anybody that wishes to document their ideas down on paper but simply does not have the time or resources to transcribe what they are saying by hand.
While you will have no problem in locating a good speech to text program, it is a little more of a challenge to find one that is actually one of the best, for a few different reasons. One reason is that a lot of them do not come cheap and are typically only available on loan for a short period of time. Another is that it is necessary to be able to type properly in order to use one of these programs correctly – most of them require that you use a full-sized keyboard in order to be effective.
Google Docs Voice Typing
Verdict: It’s an easy-to-use text to speech software for Mac designed for business users who don’t care about the high cost of ownership. Not the most accurate solution, but it has a fast and simple interface, and can be used as a feature-rich alternative to the best free typing software.
The software is included in Google Docs which is one of the best personal management software and is therefore inherently free. All you need to use it is a Google account and a mobile device or computer with a microphone. This is another data source for Google, but this is part of the price of “free” these days.
What Is The Premium Voice Option
If you check the ‘Use premium voice’ option then we will use an advanced algorithm to do the text to speech conversion, the output will sound more realistic and less robotic than the output of the standard algorithm. Please note that Premium voice is not available for all languages and voices, premium voice support is indicated by a icon before the language and voice name in the lists. The premium voice also requires that you have ‘premium characters’, all users get daily 1k premium characters for free, it is also possible to purchase more characters at any time here.
How To Add New Voices To Mac Os X
Mac OS X includes many high quality voices for its text-to-speech abilities, theyre in a wide variety of languages and accents and are probably some of the best computer rendered voices out there.
But guess what? Many of these incredible voices are not installed by default on a Mac! Thankfully thats easy to change, and well show you exactly how to add new voices to the Mac.
Convert Text Into Speech
Your search for an App to convert your text into English speech ends here! Get realistic and convincing English voiceovers in no time and for free with our online text to speech converter. This simple online text to voice speech generates realistic voices from any text and in many languages. fast, easy and free.
How Do I Switch On This Feature
On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Accessibility, then click Speech.
Select the Speak selected text when the key is pressed tickbox.
To have your Mac start speaking, press the specified key. To stop the speaking, press the key again.
If text is selected when you press the key, the selected text is spoken. Otherwise, available text items in the current window are spoken for example, if Mail is the current window, an email message is read.
Note: If no text items are available, you hear a beep.
Text To Speech Voices
Felasco said:Hi there MacGods,I was hoping you might know if the built-in voices used for text to speech have been up upgraded since Yosemite. Is Apple still working on that feature? Thanks!
Many of these incredible voices are not installed by default on a Mac! Thankfully thats easy to change, and well show you exactly how to add new voices to the Mac.
Macbook Tips: How To Use Speech
Take notes without a keyboard using this handy feature
Speech-to-text is a handy tool for dictation available in macOS. Once you set it up, you can scribble words to a page using this tool anywhere you would otherwise type with a keyboard. In addition to typing text, you can also enter punctuation marks and formatting such as line breaks and special symbols by speaking the commands.
While this feature was full of glitches and actually made typing more laborious in years past, Apple really has ironed out most of the wrinkles and made it fairly useful. If you find yourself needing a break from the keyboard, its definitely worth trying.
It is a handy tool when you need to work hands-free, or jot down a quick note before its lost forever. That said, its still not perfect, and I find that it works best when you speak slowly and accentuate bigger words.
1) in the upper left corner.
2) In the menu that opens, select System Preferences.
3) In System Preferences, select Keyboard.
4) In the Keyboard window, go to the Dictation tab.
5) There, switch on the dictation option.
6) to allow Apple to use the recording.
7) In any document processor, and start speaking.
8) To change the default language, .
9) Select a language you would like to convert from speech to text.
How To Use Dictate To Input Text
Once you have set the shortcut to trigger Dictation, in the previous point, you are ready to use the feature to dictate text.
1. Open the app/website/service where you want to enter text and place the cursor in the input field.
2. Double-tap the trigger key you set for Dictation, and in the two prompts that appear, hit Ok and Enable Dictation, respectively. .
3. Once you tap the trigger shortcut, you should see a microphone icon, indicating that your Mac is ready to accept dictation. Start dictating your text now. Apple recommends no longer than 40-second dictations for best results.
4. When you are done dictating your text, tap the Done button, or hit the return key to stop Dictation.
Since a lot of the text we type involves the use of various punctuations make the text easier to comprehend and better convey the message, Apple also allows you to input punctuation marks using voice with Dictation. For instance, if you need to enter a comma , you can simply speak comma in your dictation to include the same in your writing. Similarly, there are a bunch of other punctuation marks that you can use with Dictation, the commands for which you can learn here.