How to Get Your Mac to Read to You

Are you looking for a way to have your Mac read out loud? Whether you're busy with other tasks or prefer listening over reading, Apple's built-in text-to-speech feature is a useful tool to explore. In this article, we'll show you how to get your Mac to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland on the Project Gutenberg website.

To begin, open a web page in Safari and highlight a sentence or two of text using the typical click and drag technique. Right-click on the highlighted text and select 'Speech' from the dropdown menu. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut Command + Shift + > to start the speech feature.

Under the 'Highlighting' tab, turn off 'Enable navigation controls' to disable quick access to pause and play, adjust speed, and skip lines of text. This will allow you to shade the whole screen except for the text being spoken, giving you a stronger contrast between the highlighted words and the rest of the screen.

Next, select a color next to 'Color for word highlights' and turn on 'Highlight each word as it is spoken.' This feature will highlight each word as it is read out loud. Under the 'Text-to-Speech' tab, turn on 'Select- to-speak' to enable this feature.

If you prefer not to use highlighting, you can change the color of the highlighted words or shade the screen behind selected text. When using Select-to-speak, each word will be highlighted as it's spoken. To stop Select-to-Speak while it's reading, press Ctrl or the Search key.

Additionally, if you're using a touchscreen, you can tap a line of text or drag your finger over an area of the screen to start the speech feature. At the bottom right, near the time, select 'Select- to-speak' from the dropdown menu.

Finally, don't forget that you can change the language, voice, and volume for text read aloud by navigating to the relevant settings. With these simple steps, you'll be able to have your Mac read out loud in no time!

How to get your mac to read to you