Text to speech mac lion full#

If youвЂ™d like something with a more international flair (again, assuming youвЂ™re living in the U.S.), try the Serena voice found under the English (United Kingdom) heading. YouвЂ™ll find, for example, that the Samantha voice sounds quite natural. Select one and click the Play button at the bottom of the sheet to audition it. Click on the Customize command at the bottom of this menu and youвЂ™ll find a long list of voices. YouвЂ™re not limited to using the Alex voiceД«ut youвЂ™re not limited to just these voices. Both the Bruce and Fred voices sound very вЂњcomputeryвЂќ as does the Kathy voice (the Vicki and Victoria voices are better, but not entirely natural sounding). If you click on the Speaking Voice menu you see that you can choose from a number of different voices. Just click the Play button to hear a sample. Alex is the default because, for those in the U.S., itвЂ™s the most natural sounding voice. The one area of interest here is the Speaking Voice pop-up menu. If you like, you can also ask that your Mac to announce the time. You can additionally choose to have system alerts announced, have your Mac tell you when an application needs your attention, and speak selected text when you press a particular key combination (Option-Escape is the default). In the area below youвЂ™ll find options for choosing a voice (Alex is selected by default in the United States) and adjusting the speaking rate. Again, launch System Preferences, choose Dictation & Speech, and click on the Text to Speech tab. Text to Speech is another easy-to-use feature built into Mountain Lion. You can use dictation with any application that supports text input. The few controls found in the Dictation preferenceДictation isnвЂ™t one of those features that works with applications specifically written to allow it.

When you do, your stored data and words will be deleted from AppleвЂ™s servers. If youвЂ™re uncomfortable with that, simply turn off dictation in this preference. Apple keeps a copy of your words to help improve dictationвЂ™s performance. When you finish speaking, your words appear within the application in which you initiated the dictation command. IвЂ™ll save you the trip by explaining that when you use dictation, the words you say are sent to AppleвЂ™s servers where some powerful technology is applied to the job of quickly turning those words into text (so yes, your Mac needs to be connected to the Internet for this to work). When you click it youвЂ™ll learn something of how this technology works. YouвЂ™ll also see an About Dictation and Privacy button at the bottom of this pane. You have the options to turn Dictation on or off, select a keyboard shortcut to engage dictation, choose the language youвЂ™ll be speaking, and select an audio source (which, if your Mac comes equipped with a microphone, is the internal mic).

Text to speech mac lion full#

Given how capable dictation can be, youвЂ™d think that the Dictation pane would be full of arcane settings and demands that you spend an hour training the Mac to understand you.