--- title: "How to make your Mac read text aloud: text to speech on Mac" description: "Have your Mac read selected text aloud with Speak selection and Option-Esc, change the voice and speed, highlight words as they are read, or use a natural local voice with SpeechBee Read Aloud." url: "https://speechbee.app/guides/text-to-speech-on-mac" --- # 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. > ### The short version > > 1. Open **System Settings**, click **Accessibility**, then **Read & Speak**. > 2. Turn on **Speak selection**. > 3. Select text in any app and press **Option-Esc**. Press it again to stop. ## How to turn on text to speech on a Mac 1. Click the Apple menu and choose **System Settings**. 2. Click **Accessibility** in the sidebar. You may need to scroll down. 3. Click **Read & Speak**. 4. 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: 1. In **System Settings**, **Accessibility**, **Read & Speak**, open the **System voice** menu. 2. 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. 3. 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. 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](https://speechbee.app/compare/speechify-alternatives) page covers ElevenReader, NaturalReader and Voice Dream too. ## 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 - [Speechify alternatives for Mac](https://speechbee.app/compare/speechify-alternatives) - [How to dictate on a Mac](https://speechbee.app/guides/how-to-dictate-on-mac) - [SpeechBee vs Apple Dictation](https://speechbee.app/compare/speechbee-vs-apple-dictation) ## Sources All checked on 12 October 2026. - [Apple: Have your Mac speak text that's on the screen](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/have-your-mac-speak-text-thats-on-the-screen-mh27448/mac) - [Apple: Change the voice your Mac uses to speak text](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-the-voice-your-mac-uses-to-speak-text-mchlp2290/mac) - [ElevenReader pricing](https://elevenreader.io/pricing) - SpeechBee facts from our [homepage](https://speechbee.app/), [privacy policy](https://speechbee.app/privacy) and the SpeechBee app's voice settings