Since OS X Yosemite (10.9), Mac OS standard software offers synthetic voice narration. These are the five major free text-to-speech software (sites) that can be used on Mac. Today, we are going to introduce the text-to-speech software that can be used by such Mac users. When looking for a software, you always have to worry about the OS.Įven if you find a software that you think 'This software is great!,' you cannot even try it if the OS is not supported.Īccordingly, when you search for text-to-speech software on the Internet, yes, there are many for Windows.īut what about the Mac? Obviously, there are much less. That is, there are some restrictions on the OS that can be supported. bash_profile to evoke it by typing speak.When you are searching for a text-to-speech software on the Internet, since you find it very useful, you will come to realize one thing. I save it to my scripts as 'mand', chmod it +x, and add the appropriate alias to my. # Choose a voice in one of some selected languagesĮcho 'ERROR. I hope you can find a solution that fits yours. With it, All I do to change the default language is to pop into the terminal to type speak swedish or speak french.

I do prefer the terminal, and instead of testing the polyglot menu-bar intrusion, I made this (admittedly simple-stupid) shell script (which uses voices) for my language-switching needs. Here it is (updated): tell application 'System Preferences'ĭelay 0.2 - without this the value was sometimes 'Loading Voices…'Ĭlick menu item 'Mehr Stimmen anzeigen' of menu 1 - show up all available voiceĭirect changes to ~/Library/Preferences/.ist are not really needed if you get the bash-script Voices which really adds all the command-line functionality you need.Īn Apple Script to change the standard voice to Alex using Voices would simply look like this: on run My code lack a bit of elegance, but works. The problem is, when your system language is not english, all non system languages are hidden (if not currently selected). I have extended your UI scripting approach to work properly with german and english voices. Tell pop up button 1 of tab group 1 of window 1Ĭhanging the SelectedVoiceID key in .ist also works, but I don't know how to apply the changes immediately. Tell application 'System Events' to tell process 'System Preferences' WorkflowServiceRunner can also use over 100% CPU while speaking text.Īnother option would be to use UI scripting to change between two voices: tell application 'System Preferences' There is a bug in 10.7 and 10.8 where the shortcuts for Automator services don't always work until you hover over the services menu from the menu bar. You could also create a service in Automator: Tell application 'System Events' to keystroke 'c' using command down I have used FastScripts to assign a shortcut to this script: try

Mac os x tts voices