Text to Speech in Mac OS X

MAC OS X Leopard includes built-in Text-To-Speech engine, it allows the mac to talk back to you any written text.

in order to activate it and custom it follow these next steps:

1. got to system preferences.

2. next choose "Speech" icon

3. select "Text to Speech" tab

4. select the System Voice you want (probably Vicki works nice)

5. next select the reading speed (slow it down just a bit from normal and it will be clear reading)

6. next mark the checkbox "Speak selected text when key is pressed"

7. lastly a popup of key combination will appear (if not then press the "Set Key..." button)

8. select the text field and press your preferred key combination to start/stop reading (i use Command+Option+V)

9. to test it go to some text, select it and press your key combination to start reading, press it again to stop reading or wait until it will finish.

Text to Speech - iSpeak (Widget)

if you are like me (read a lot of material on the web, yet lazy),

you will want someone to read to you while laying your head on a pillow,

that would certainly make reading a lot easier.

well head on the pillow is still more complicated to achieve,

but the reading part is already available (but not perfect yet, since you cant hear music at the same time).

iSpeak is a cool small free utility packed as a widget for your dashboard,

you can paste or write text into it and press speak and it will start reading to you,

there are several voices but the default is just fine (vicki).

rest of the voices are not installed on my hackintosh system (iAtkos needed to save space) but you can download or purchase other voices from the web (links up ahead).

iSpeak download link

Demo and purchase voices:

AssistiveWare Voices

Cepstral Voices

Buy AT&T Natural Voices

the system voices are kept in folder:

/System/Library/Speech/Voices/

you can remove voices folders to save space (but leave vicki for system stability)

please read also my next post: "Text to Speech in Mac OS x"

if you have removed voices or don't have Vicki or Fred, then here are links to download freely, just copy the content with administrator privileges to the folder mentioned before.

Fred (3 KB)

Vicki (17.7 MB)

by the way, a great news reader that uses this text-to-speech technology on the web is: Pimp My News, it is a news reader that can read them to you, you can also download the news as a separated files or playlist to your iphone or ipod.

Enjoy.