SpeechBeeGuide
How to make your Mac read text aloud
Your Mac can read any text you select out loud, free, with one shortcut. This guide shows how to switch it on, pick a better voice, and control the speed. It also covers when a dedicated reader is worth it.
By the SpeechBee team. Checked against Apple's Mac User Guide on 12 October 2026
On this page
How to turn on text to speech on a Mac
- Click the Apple menu and choose System Settings.
- Click Accessibility in the sidebar. You may need to scroll down.
- Click Read & Speak.
- Turn on Speak selection.
That is the whole setup.
How to have your Mac read selected text
Select the text you want to hear, in Safari, Mail, Pages, a PDF in Preview, or almost anywhere else. Press Option-Esc. Your Mac starts reading. Press Option-Esc again to stop.
If nothing is selected, your Mac reads the text items available in the current window. If there is nothing it can read, you hear a sound instead.
Many apps also have a menu route. Choose Edit, then Speech, then Start Speaking, and Stop Speaking when you are done.
Change the shortcut, highlighting and controller
In Read & Speak, click the info button next to Speak selection. There you can:
- Change the keyboard shortcut, for example to Option-Tab.
- Highlight content as it is read, by word, by sentence, or both, in colors you choose.
- Show the controller, a small on-screen panel to play, pause, change the speaking rate, and skip forward or back a sentence. It is most useful for long text.
Pick a better voice
The default system voice is fine for a sentence, and tiring for an article. To change it:
- In System Settings, Accessibility, Read & Speak, open the System voice menu.
- For more choices, click the info button next to System voice, choose a language, and click a voice to download it. You need an internet connection for the download.
- Pick the new voice from the System voice menu once it has finished downloading.
You can also change the System speech language there. Not every language has voices, and Apple lists what is available on its feature availability page.
Other ways your Mac can speak
- Speak items under the pointer and speak typed keys are in the same Read & Speak settings.
- Speak announcements reads dialogs and alerts aloud.
- VoiceOver is the full screen reader for people who cannot see the screen. It is a much bigger tool than Speak selection.
When a dedicated reader is worth it
Speak selection is free and good enough for checking a paragraph. If you listen for longer, you notice the limits. Apple's voices sound flatter than modern neural voices to our ears. Over twenty minutes, that difference is tiring.
That is why we built Read Aloud into SpeechBee.
Hi Maya, I'll send the revised proposal tomorrow morning.
Most people read faster than they speak. SpeechBee reads the sentence you selected out loud, while you keep working.
Select text in any Mac app and press your reading key. A natural voice reads it, and a small player lets you pause, skip and change the speed from half speed to double. The voices download once and then run on your Mac, so your text never leaves it and nothing is saved. On iPhone and iPad, paste text into the Read tab.
You choose the voice engine in settings:
| Voice engine | Languages | Download |
|---|---|---|
| Kokoro | English and Mandarin Chinese, fast on the Neural Engine | About 170 MB for English, 100 MB for Mandarin |
| PocketTTS | English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, richer voices | About 410 MB for English, about 1.4 GB per other language |
| Supertonic 3 | 31 languages from one install | About 450 MB, needs at least 16 GB of memory |
Each read takes up to 5,000 characters, so long documents are read a section at a time. SpeechBee also does dictation in the other direction. Hold a key, talk, and your words appear at the cursor. Dictating a draft and then listening to it is a quick way to catch mistakes.
It needs an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later. 7 days free, then $9 a month, $79 a year, or $99 once, and one plan covers Mac, iPhone and iPad. If you are comparing paid readers, our Speechify alternatives for Mac page covers ElevenReader, NaturalReader and Voice Dream too.
Hear any text in a natural voice. Free for 7 days.
Voice to text and Read Aloud on your Mac, iPhone and iPad. After the week, $9 a month, $79 a year, or $99 once. Every plan has every feature.
Questions
How do I get my Mac to read text out loud?
Turn on Speak selection in System Settings, Accessibility, Read & Speak. Then select text in any app and press Option-Esc. Press Option-Esc again to stop.
Does Mac have text to speech built in?
Yes. Speak selection is built into macOS and free. It reads selected text with the system voice. You can change the voice, speed, shortcut and highlighting in Read & Speak settings.
How do I change the voice my Mac reads with?
Open System Settings, Accessibility, Read & Speak, and choose a voice from the System voice menu. Click the info button next to it to download more voices.
What is the shortcut for text to speech on a Mac?
Option-Esc by default, once Speak selection is turned on. You can change it in the Speak selection options.
Can my Mac read a PDF aloud?
Yes. Open the PDF in Preview, select the text, and press Option-Esc, or choose Edit, Speech, Start Speaking. SpeechBee reads selected PDF text the same way with a natural voice.
Is there a free natural-sounding text to speech for Mac?
macOS Speak selection is free, and you can download better system voices for it. SpeechBee's Read Aloud uses neural voices that run on your Mac, with 7 days free. ElevenReader has a free plan with 10 hours of audio a month in the browser.
Keep reading
Sources
All checked on 12 October 2026.
- Apple: Have your Mac speak text that's on the screen
- Apple: Change the voice your Mac uses to speak text
- ElevenReader pricing
- SpeechBee facts from our homepage, privacy policy and the SpeechBee app's voice settings