By default, Alex will be your system’s speaking voice, but you can choose any other voice that comes with your Mac to do the talking if you don’t like the default voice.Ģ) Make sure you’re in the Speech tab in the sidebar, and click on the System Voice drop-down menu to select any of the available voices in the list. Your Mac will speak out the text using your system’s selected voice. Changing the voice used for speaking text Just head over to any body of text that supports text selection, such as on a web page, highlight the text, and hit your keyboard shortcut. Making your Mac speak selected textĪfter you’ve got the speak selection feature enabled on your Mac, it’s pretty easy to use. To change your keyboard shortcut, simply click on the Change Key… button, and when prompted, press the keyboard shortcut on the Mac you want to use instead and click OK. The default shortcut is pressing Option + Esc on your keyboard, but you can change it to anything. With this feature turned on, you can now use the keyboard shortcut whenever text is selected to have your Mac speak it aloud. To ensure the feature is enabled on your Mac, follow these steps:ġ) Launch the System Preferences app and open the Accessibility preferences pane.Ģ) Click on the Speech tab in the sidebar and ensure the Speak selected text when the key is pressed option is enabled.

This is an accessibility feature that you have to enable from the System Preferences app on your Mac. Making your Mac speak selected text is easy. How to make your Mac speak text you select This will ensure you understand what you’re looking at, even if you have to listen to it instead. I can see this being useful for anyone who can’t see well because when text is too small to make sense of, you can simply select it and press your hotkeys on the keyboard to have your Mac say it aloud.

I particularly find it useful when I want to listen to something and type at the same time, because rather than having to read and type at the same time, which involves looking back and forth, having the text read aloud to me lets me remain focused on my typing. If you’re hard at seeing, or you’re trying to multitask, sometimes having your Mac speak a body of text out loud to you, instead of you needing to read it, can be helpful. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how you can make your Mac speak a selected body of text with ease. This comes in handy when you can’t see the text very well and would find it useful to have the text read out loud to you. Your Mac, just like any iOS devices you own, comes with the ability to speak selected text.

Macbook text to speech