select text in any application with your mouse.

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. 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. And some of the British voices are great. There is a huge variation in quality.įor example, Tom sounds a bit impatient, but way more realistic than Alex. It is worth going through several of the voices before deciding on one.

you’re right, I’ve copied the incanation below… thanks a bunch!!.

I’m sure you could call it through PyObjC, which is included with Mac OS X 10.5 and above.

Shell Version, no hack too cheap! ls /System/Library/Speech/Voices | sed 's/.SpeechVoice$//'AgnesAlbertAlexBadNewsBahhBellsBoing. Python Version, courtesy of Barry Wark: from AppKit import NSSpeechSynthesizerprint NSSpeechSynthesizer.availableVoices This is the list of available voices: say -v '?' for voice in `say -v '?' | awk ''` do say -v '$voice' 'Hello, my name is $voice.' done How can I get this list programmatically? The available voices can be seen in System Preferences/Speech/Text to Speech. say -v Alex 'compile completed, put your swords down.' The mac command say can specify the voice used with the -v flag. Recommended Reading: What Are The 5 Languages Of Love Getting List Of Mac Text

And with Lion a whole family of great voices in many international languages became available to Mac users for free. With the Update on Leopard Alex showed on my drive. My bookshelf is my extensive audible library.įor this reason I love the built in Text to speech feature in Mac OS X. Other peoples shelves are bursting with books. But I consider myself to be on the auditory learners side. Sure, great typography like on this page can greatly improve the reading experience. Worst are my skills, reading on a screen. I dont enjoy much sitting down and reading a long text. Therefore, as a result, you can hear the transcripted voice. Matching phonetics and their sounds are adjoined. Our database already has the human audio for all the phonetics or you can simply say transcriptions. The text to voice tool uses a speech synthesizing technique in which the text is at first converted into its phonetic form. Whether a single character or big paragraph you will be able to listen to it.

You can hear the audio recitation of the text instantly. This tool helps you to easily convert your written text into speech or voice. To select a default Mac “text to speech” voice, just follow these steps:ġ) Click the “Apple” menu on the Mac menu barįigure 1: Mac OS X System Preferences, Speech buttonįigure 2: The Mac OS X System Preferences “Text to Speech” panelĥ) Select from the System Voice options that are available.

Speech to text for macbook