The Mac Reads to You

As you may have noticed, OS X is quite talented when it comes to speech. Its abilities fall into three categories: typing out what you say, reading text aloud using a synthesized voice, and obeying spoken commands. For details on OS X’s dictation feature, see Case Swapping. For more on the spoken commands thing, see Dictation.

But to make the Mac talk, read on.

Most Apple programs have a Start Speaking command built right in: Safari, Mail, TextEdit, Messages, Stickies, Pages, and so on. Just right-click (or two-finger click) inside a window full of text and, from the pop-up menu, choose Speech→Start Speaking. How cool is that? Your Mac can read your email or a web article to you while you’re getting dressed.

You can add a Speak command in FileMaker Pro scripts. OS X’s Chess and Calculator programs can talk back, too.

But that’s kid stuff. Truth is, the Mac can read almost anything you like: text you pass your cursor over, alert messages, menus, and any text document in any program. It can speak in your choice of dozens of synthesizer voices, ages 8 to 50. Most read with a twangy, charmingly Norwegian accent—but some of the newest voices (like Alex, Jill, Samantha, and Tom) sound scarily like a professional human voice-over artist.

Note

This text-reading business is not the same thing as the Mac’s VoiceOver feature. VoiceOver is designed to read everything on the screen, including pop-up menus, buttons, and other controls, to visually impaired Mac fans (and to permit complete control, mouse-free, of everything). Details are on Announce when alerts are displayed.

Setting Up the Mac’s Voice

To configure the way the Mac talks, revisit the Dictation & Speech pane of System Preferences. Click the Text to Speech tab at the top of the window. As you can see in Figure 14-10, you can control which of the Mac’s voices you want your computer to use, as well as how fast it should speak.

Figure 14-10. Top: At the outset, you see only six voices. Bottom: Choose Customize to see the complete list of 29 American English voices (plus 73 international voices); turn on the checkboxes of the ones you want to have available. The Mac automatically downloads any international voices you select. Then, for 15 minutes of hilarity, try clicking the voices in turn to hear sample sentences. Drag the slider to affect how fast each one speaks. (Clearly, Apple’s programmers had some fun with this assignment.)

GEM IN THE ROUGH: Voices to Sing About

The Mac’s built-in speaking voices are no end to fun, as noted in Figure 14-10.

Five of the voices, in fact, sing rather than speak. Good News sings to the tune of “Pomp and Circumstance,” otherwise known as the Graduation March. Bad News sings to the tune of Chopin’s Prelude in C minor, better known as the Funeral March. Cellos sings to the tune of Grieg’s Peer Gynt suite. Pipe Organ sings to the tune of the Alfred Hitchcock TV theme. Bells sings the typical church-bell carillon melody.

In other words, these voices sing whatever words you type to those melodies. (To hear the melody in its entirety, don’t use any punctuation.)

As shown in Figure 14-10, though, the Mac comes with a huge range of additional voices that you can add to the pop-up menu here.

Tip

Three of the most recently added American voices—Jill, Samantha, and Tom—sound great. But don’t ignore the “international” voices just because you’re an American English speaker. There are also voices that speak English with British, South African, and Australian accents—always fun.

All of those voices have to be downloaded, so you can’t grab them without an Internet connection. They’re huge files, too, so don’t be impatient. (They’re stored in your System→Library→Speech→Voices folder.)

Here are all the different occasions when the Mac can talk to you.

Announce when alerts are displayed

If you turn on this checkbox, you can make the Mac read aloud error messages and alert messages that may appear on your screen. If you click the Set Alert Options button, you’ll find these useful controls:

• Voice. Use this pop-up menu to specify the voice you want reading your error messages. (It doesn’t have to be the same as the standard Mac voice that’s used for other purposes.)

• Phrase. Use this pop-up menu to specify which utterance the Mac speaks before the actual error message—for example, “Excuse me! The Trash could not be emptied,” or “Attention! The document could not be printed.”

  If you choose “Next in the phrase list” or “Random from the phrase list” from this pop-up menu, you’ll never hear the same expletive twice. Better yet, choose Edit Phrase List to open a dialog box where you can specify your own words of frustration. (Apple Inc. is not liable for any trouble you may get into with people in neighboring cubicles.)

  GEM IN THE ROUGH: Talking to Chess

  If your friends and coworkers are still unimpressed by OS X and your mastery of it, invite them over to watch you play a game of chess with your Mac—by talking to it.

  (Actually, this feature isn’t purely for entertainment: Some chess players prefer to move without looking at the board. By speaking their moves to the computer—and having the computer respond by speaking its own moves—these people can play “blindfolded.”)

  Open the Chess program. Unless you’ve turned it off (in Chess→Preferences), the game’s speech-recognition feature is already turned on. When it’s on, the round Feedback window should be visible onscreen.

  To learn how to speak commands in a way that Chess understands, click the small gray triangle at the bottom of the Speech Feedback window to open the Speech Commands window. As usual, it lists all the commands Chess can comprehend.

  You specify the location of pieces using the grid of numbers and letters along the edges of the chessboard. The white king, for example, starts on square e1 because it’s in the first row (1) and the fifth column (e). To move the king forward by one square, you’d say, “King e1 to e2.”

  As the Speech Commands window should make clear, a few other commands are at your disposal. “Take back move” is one of the most useful. When you’re ready to close in for the kill, the syntax is “Pawn e5 takes f6.”

  And smile when you say that.

• Delay. The ostensible purpose of the Talking Alerts feature is to get your attention if you’ve wandered away from your Mac—mentally or physically. The chances are slim, but an urgent problem might occur that, if left undetected, could land you in trouble. (A 500-page printout brought to its knees by a paper jam comes to mind.)

  In other words, if you’re still sitting in front of your Mac, you may not need the Mac to speak to get your attention; you could simply read the onscreen message. That’s why you can set this slider to make the Mac wait, after the error message appears, for up to a minute before trying to flag you with its voice. That way it won’t harangue you unnecessarily. (Click Play for a sense of how long the Mac will delay before speaking.)

Announce when alerts are displayed

You know all those notifications that appear in bubbles at the top right of your screen? Now the Mac can tell you, in so many words, which program needs your attention.

Speak selected text when the key is pressed

As promised, this is the feature that makes the Mac read you any web page, any email message, any sticky note—a welcome break for sore eyes. Furthermore, if you do any kind of writing at all, you’ll discover the value of having your material read back to you out loud; it’s a proofreading technique that reveals all kinds of typos and wordos that you wouldn’t catch just by reading, even if you read it 50 times.

The very first time you turn on this checkbox, the Mac prompts you to specify a keystroke. (Later, you can always change the keystroke by clicking Change Key.) Choose a keystroke that doesn’t conflict with the program you’re using, like Control-T.

Now go to the program where you’d like the reading to happen. Highlight some text (or press ⌘-A to select all of it). Then press the keystroke you specified. The Mac begins reading it aloud immediately. To interrupt the playback, press the same keystroke again.

And be glad you were alive to see the day.