Text To Speech On Mac

What Is The Best Text

Any of Speechifys AI voices top other artificial narrators out there. Aside from choosing whether youll listen to a male or female voice-over, you can also choose their accents and dialects, making Speechify the most versatile text-to-speech app on the market. Its like having the ease and comfort of keyboard shortcuts or your favorite fonts with the listening experience of a world-class podcast.

A Quick And Free Way To Help You Spot Errors In Your Writing

Heres a quick tip to help you check written content on your Mac, using the text-to-speech feature.

Instead of reading the text out loud yourself, you can get your Mac to do it via a simple keyboard shortcut.

This is useful if you want to check the flow of your own writing or if you simply want to listen to content rather than read it. You can use this on web pages, emails, documents and pretty much anywhere that you can select text.

The feature is built in to all modern Macs you just need to turn it on. Heres how.

The example above shows that voice data needs to be downloaded to enable these additional voices.

In the UK, the default voice is Daniel. Leave the box labelled Upgrade to enhanced quality ticked to download a better version of his voice.

Once you have done all of this, you can test your Macs text-to-speech function on a real piece of writing.

How To Use Text

Text-to-speech APIs work with numerous applications. One of the most common uses is with browsers like Safari or Chrome, and you can add it as an extension. The type of settings and functions you will get mostly depends on the TTS tool you choose. You can also download apps for your desktop or mobile deviceswhether that be your MacBook, iPhone or iPad.

The majority of well-known brands have their own version of text-to-speech. Google Cloud text-to-speech is just one of many possible options. There are also , Microsoft Azure, NaturalReader, Speechify, and many more.

You can also check out the native TTS app on MacOS.

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How To Make Mac Read Text

It is hard to read the text on your Mac screen when it is too small, then you can instruct Siri to read them to you. Or, you want to hear the text read aloud and deal with other tasks meanwhile. This is where the Text to speech feature on Mac comes in. You will learn about how to make Mac read text from this post.

• 3. FAQs about text to speech Mac

Use The Following Commands For Reading Text:

When you use the Down Arrow key to move from one line of text to the next, VoiceOver speaks the line where the insertion point is located. If you press the Down Arrow key at the first line of a document, VoiceOver wont read the line because the insertion point has moved to the next line. To hear the first line of text in a document, press VO-Down Arrow.

The orientation commands VO-F4-F4 and VO-F5-F5-F5 can be useful in determining the insertion points location in a document. To assign commands to keys that let you fast forward and rewind text when you use Read All, open VoiceOver Utility , then click Commanders.

This tutorial was written and test-driven on a 2020 iMac running macOS Catalina 10.15.7

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Listen To Spoken Text

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.

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Modulating The Speech With Effect Tags

You can add a lot of effects with tags:

• ] : silence for 5s.
• ] changes the volume to the indicated level.
• ] increases the volume by the indicated level.
• ] changes the speed
• ] changes the pitch.
• ] resets all these parameters to default
• word :quotes also put the emphasis on the word.

Below is an example of a script I used:

]]]I am going to present studies about how we can ] build a curious robot learner for interactive goal-babbling ] by designing a system ]for ]strategically] choosing, what, how, when, and from whom to learn]. In other words, the system ]chooses] ]the content, procedure, timing and source of its learning process.]]

The complete list of commands and how to use them can be found .

You can also try applescripts and javascript. See for more details.

Great Tool But Needs A Click To Speak

This is as good as any text to speak–and they are not a lot devoted to this. I have Bulbar ALS and can’t speak so the ease of typing and volume and accent/voice controls are very good. It would be perfect if I could stroke a key to speak what was written and have it automatically erase because 90% of the time I am not repeating myself. Instead, I have to use my mouse to play and manually delete each sentenece so as to not repeat it.

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How To Enable Spoken Content In Macos

• Click the Apple icon in the menu.
• Click System Preferences.
• In the left-hand panel, select Spoken Content.
• Click the tickboxes next to the options you want enabled.

Spoken Content is divided into four general sections, with each having its own personalization options. They cover spoken announcements, selected text, items being pointed at with the mouse, and for typing feedback.

Depending on what you need enabled, simply click the option next to the specific feature.

At the top of the screen are the main voice settings, where you can select the voice Siri will use, test out the voice, and affect the rate of speech. In the System Voice dropdown, you can also select to Customize the voice, allowing you to select and download new voices, including those for other languages.

Next to the System Voice dropdown, the Play button can be used to hear a sample of the speech that will be used, allowing you to change the voice or the speaking rate before you leave the menu.

How To Turn Text Into Lifelike Speech

Lets start with the easiest method. Speech Central makes it easy to convert text to speech with just a few clicks and can be used for various purposes, from listening to articles and emails to creating a natural human voiceover for your content. Heres how to use the app:

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What Is Chatgpt And How It Can Be Used

The importance of fonts also referred to as typography, cannot be stressed enough in the design world. It contributes to building your brand identity, legibility, and aesthetics. Most of the design software already offers a wide variety of typographies, but some designers import fonts to create the utmost unique and fresh artwork.

Typography is the strategic arrangement in order to make written language readable and visually appealing. The art of typography is one of the most important skills every graphic and web designer needs to master. Its central to every form of design, both print and digital.

Stephanie Corrigan

The main function of a font is to deliver a message. In order for your audience to understand the message, legibility is very important. For example, if your content is written in messy handwritten cursive, it would be difficult for your audience to understand your message, especially if youre trying to create a learning video.

Subsequently, fonts can also portray information hierarchy. This means that changing the font size, boldness, or using a completely different font will create an information hierarchy. This means that the audience will categorize the text in your context based on their own importance.

If you were to use Times New Roman, you would automatically set a rather serious and rigid mood for your audience. However, if you were to use Fantai font, you can convey a fun, playful, and enthusiastic mood.

Set The Dictation Keyboard Shortcut

You can choose a specific dictation keyboard shortcut or create one of your own.

Tip: If is available in the row of function keys, you can press it to start Dictation or use the keyboard shortcut.

Note: When you choose a Dictation keyboard shortcut, depending on your Mac model, the Press fn key to or Press to option in Keyboard settings may change automatically. For example, if you choose Press Fn Key Twice as the Dictation Shortcut option, the Keyboard settings option changes to Start Dictation automatically.

For more help with Keyboard options, click the Help button in Keyboard settings.

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How To Enable Text

The first thing you will need to do is find an app that works on MacBooks and install it on your device. Fortunately, there are plenty of options to choose from. As for the choice, why not pick the best text-to-speech available on the marketSpeechify.

Once you install Speechify from the App Store, using it is quite easy. The app works on your desktop and also has a Safari web browser extention, and you can add the text to it in just a few steps. Speechify also supports OCR, which allows you to snap a photo of a text, and the character recognition will turn the text into audio.

This can save you so much time, and the quality of the app will create a seamless experience for your text-to-speech needs.

How To Convert Text To Speech On Pc Or Mac

This article was co-authored by wikiHow Staff. Our trained team of editors and researchers validate articles for accuracy and comprehensiveness. wikiHow’s Content Management Team carefully monitors the work from our editorial staff to ensure that each article is backed by trusted research and meets our high quality standards.The wikiHow Tech Team also followed the article’s instructions and verified that they work. This article has been viewed 6,081 times.

This wikiHow teaches you how to use your computer’s text-to-speech feature to select a character, word, line, or paragraph on your screen, and have it read out by your computer’s virtual assistant, using Mac or Windows.

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Your Mac Can Say Hello To You : Basics

Now, you can also have more fun with the terminal commands. The magical say command in your macos terminal is really unique. This is the simple example of the say command:

say hello

will output a voice that has been set by default in your system preferences. The only restriction with this is that the text-to-voice interpreter is only in English. But you can even save the output as a aiff file:

say hello world -o hello.aiff

Since macos x 10.6, you can also change the file format:

say hello world -o hello  file-format m4afsay hello world -o hello.m4a

Both the above commands output the file hello.m4a. Available output formats are AIFF, caff, m4af, WAVE.

Unfortunately, outputting a mp3 file is not yet possible directly. Still, you can simply convert the output file into a mp3 with the lame command say text to read out loud -o filename.extension : for instance :

say hello world -o hello.aifflame -m m hello.aiff hello.mp3

You can change the speed/speech rate with option -r Nor the embedded speech command ], where N is the nimber of words per minutes:

say -r 400 "Just what do you think you're doing Dave?"say "] Just what do you think you're doing Dave?"

You can even choose your voice and have much more fun with the command :

say -v voiceName text to say

For instance, with Daniels voice:

say -v Daniel i am a lady

You have in English UK language the pre-installed voices in MacOS 11.3 Big Sur of :

say -v?

I can use either commands

say -v Siri i am a geek

How To Stop Text To Speech On My Mac

All Macs come preinstalled with an application called VoiceOver. VoiceOver is a powerful accessibility tool for users who are blind or have vision difficulties. One of the many features that VoiceOver offers is automatically reading on-screen text aloud with a computerized voice. Some VoiceOver users may find that they do not need this text-to-speech function turned on. Other users may have accidentally enabled VoiceOver and wish to turn it off.

Step 1

Open the “System Preferences” menu. Select “Universal Access.” A window opens that displays settings for all accessibility options available on your Mac. If you wish to simply turn off VoiceOver, click the “Off” radio button beneath the “VoiceOver” heading. If you wish to leave VoiceOver running but want to change the speech settings, click the “Open VoiceOver Utility” button. This opens a new window.

Step 2

Select the “Speech” icon in the left sidebar.

Step 3

Check the box labeled “Mute Speech.” This disables all text-to-speech functions while leaving other VoiceOver audio effects active. Close the VoiceOver utility when you are finished.

References

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How To Add Different Languages For Voice Dictation On Mac

Text To Speech Feature On Mac

You can get Siri read to you on iPad and iPhone with the feature named Speak Screen enabled. This text-to-speech feature is also available on macOS with a different name, that is Spoken Content on Mac.

Spoken Content is an Accessibility feature in System Preferences. If you turn on Spoken Content, it can read any text on your screen when you invoke this feature. Besides, you can customize Spoken Content by changing the preferences, including voice, rate, volume, etc.

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Select The Voices You Want To Add

6. Tick any of the voices to add them to the list. The voices you tick will be downloaded so you will need to be connected to the internet. To hear how your new voice sounds, click the Play button. Click OK to save your changes.

Note: A voice you add will only be used to speak text that is written in the language for that voice.

Use Dictation From The Menu Bar

The first way to use Dictation is from the menu bar at the top of your screen.

1. To start, open up your application of choice — such an email or word processor — and click anywhere where you want to input text.

2. Next, navigate to the menu bar and click Edit> Start Dictation. As soon as you do, a small microphone icon next to your cursor will appear. As you speak, you’ll see the volume control in the microphone go up and down, indicating the strength of your voice. You should also see text populating the area where your cursor is, after you speak.

3. Once you’re finished dictating, click Done.

Choose a shortcut for Dictation in System Preferences.

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