9/22/2020 Short Cut For Text To Voice On Mac
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Your favorite assistant finally made its way to the Mac, starting with the macOS Sierra software update.
If you have used Siri on your iPhone or iPad before, then you’ll probably feel right at home with the assistant on your Mac since it works in a similar way. However, unlike your iPhone, you don’t have the ability to invoke Siri on your Mac by saying “Hey, Siri.” Instead, you will have to click on the Siri icon in the Menu Bar, or in the Dock.
Another way to invoke Siri is by using a keyboard shortcut. Admittedly, this is my preferred way of activating the assistant as it feels faster and more efficient than reaching for the mouse or trackpad and clicking on the Siri icon.
Using a keyboard shortcut to talk to Siri
If like me, you want to use a keyboard shortcut to activate Siri, then go to System Preferences > Siri. From there, click on the Keyboard Shortcut dropdown menu and select a preferred shortcut. By default, macOS offers these three different shortcuts to call up Siri:
You also have the ability to create your own shortcut, and to do so, you will have to choose the Customize option. Once selected, you will have to press the keys you want to set as a shortcut on your keyboard.
Note that to ensure compatibility across various apps and system services, you want to be careful not to overwrite some other shortcuts already available. For instance, we wouldn’t suggest using Command + C since this is the default shortcut for copying text.
Personally, I am using the Hold Command + Space key combination, but you’re obviously free to use whatever fits your workflow the best.
If you are using Siri on your Mac, are using a specific keyboard shortcut to invoke it, or are you using one of the default option?
Active2 months ago
I use Mac's Text to Speech function a lot. Under Settings > Speech > Text to Speech I also have set a 'Key' for quick access.
Since I also want Text to Speech to read German and OS Lion offers Voices for other languages, I would like to have a second shortcut for German.
Does anyone know where I can set this? Or is the only way to constantly change the System Voice before I want a German text to be read? (And then reset the voice to Alex for English texts)? And what about French text?
What options exist for this general problem?
bmike♦
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JosephJoseph
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7 Answers
You can use the
say command with OS X's other voices to get different languages. Use the Thomas voice to get French pronunciation or Yannick for German.
In this example, I will use Thomas and French as this is what I know but
Yannick should work as well for German text.
Try the following command in Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app:
If this is acceptable, you can wrap the
say command up in an Automator service; which we will do next.
Automator Service
To create the Automator Service:
To use the service:
Et voilà ! Other languages and voices are available.
This Automator approach allows you to keep your computer default voice set to your preferred language. While allowing selected text to be read in the alternative voice.
You can list the available voices and their associated languages with the command:
Shortcut For Text To Voice On Mac
The available voices can change between versions of macOS. On macOS 10.13, the command returns:
Graham MilnGraham Miln
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Kind of old post and maybe you have found a solution already.One way to simplify this is with Automator.
Open Automator, choose Service,Service receives selected text,drag action 'Speak Text' to build worklowselect Voice (for example: Ryan Speaking)Save
Repeat with different voices.
(The Services List can be edited/cleaned up with Service Scrubber Application and partly under System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services)
Edit:Now that you have two or more Voices under the Services Menu, you can go to:System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Application Shortcutsand create a new Shortcut for each voice.
So far, it works like this on my machine (OS 10.6.8):Default System Voice: Ryan (Infovox) Shortcut Selected in Speech Pref to Control+S.This starts and stops English text.
The German voice I have assigned Control+Y (Yannick voice from Lion OS).Control+Y starts German voice for German selected text; which can be stopped by clicking the main start/stop shortcut twice, here Control+S+S. The reason for twice is because pressing it once starts the English voice over the German voice.That's the best I could come up so far. Make sure the shortcuts don't conflict with other shortcuts. You will notice that the additional shortcut allows you to start several voice threads, talking over each other plus the default system voice, which drives up processor activity, but no problem if one remembers to stop the speaking by double-executing of the shortcut for the default voice.
Not sure if this works system-wide, but works in my browsers, Mail, and the BookReader app I'm using.
Edit 2:I have noticed that when activating a secondary text-to-speech voice via the Automator Service the Automator Runner process drives up processor activity to above 100% with fans speeding up. Not sure if there is a solution to this.
MikofoxMikofox
You could also set the system voice to a French one.
Go to System Preferences > Dictation & Speech > Text to Speech and set the system voice to
Thomas Best text editor for python mac. for example.
Then:
There is also an option to set a shortcut, so you can just select any text and press the shortcut to start speaking in French.
ArthurArthur
Using a custom service with the standard
Speak Text action to speak selected text with a specific alternative voice has one major drawback, as detailed in Mikofox's answer:
You cannot easily stop playback the way you can with the built-in TTS service simply by pressing the keyboard shortcut again.
There are two solutions:
Disclosure: I created the prepackaged services and the
voices CLI
Simple implementation of a service with playback toggle:
As stated, this won't honor custom speaking rates configured for the chosen voice.
Community♦
mklement0mklement0
I wrote a tool for that, just go to:
Fred FlüggeFred Flügge
Setup a keyboard shortcut for the service
To use the service
To stop the speech (Method 1)
To stop the speech (Method 2)
To add a second voice
A known small issue: Don't press a shortcut again before you end the speech or the speech ends. Otherwise, you will get an error message like the following.
ffmaerffmaer
As Mikofox mentioned, you can make an Automator service for speaking text:
Shortcuts App For Mac
There is a bug in 10.8 and 10.7 where the shortcuts for Automator services don't always work until you hover over the services menu from the menu bar.
WorkflowServiceRunner can also use over 100% CPU when speaking text.
I have used FastScripts to assign a shortcut to this script:
Another option is to just run something like LriLri
pbpaste | say -v kyoko .
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