Aloud
Buy · $19

Select anything.
Hear it.

Aloud reads selected text, PDFs and screenshots out loud, right on your Mac. No account, and nothing is sent to a server.

Buy Aloud · $19 See how it works

One-time $19. 3-day trial in the app. License key emailed after checkout.

  • $19 once
  • 3-day free trial
  • No subscription
  • macOS 14 or later
Selection · Notes

1.25×
An illustration of the floating reader, playing silently. The real one speaks.

Three ways in

If you can see it, Aloud can read it.

Selected text

Highlight words in any app and press ⌃⌥S. Aloud reads them through Accessibility, or copies and puts your clipboard back. The Read with Aloud service in the right-click menu needs no permission at all.

PDFs, without the clutter

Running headers, footers and page numbers are left out. Hyphenated line breaks are rejoined and paragraphs that cross a page read as one. Scanned pages are recognised on your Mac.

Screenshots and images

Press ⌃⌥O, drag a box around a slide, a locked viewer or a photo of a sign, and hear what it says. Text recognition runs on the Mac.

Made to stay out of the way

A quiet menu bar app with one small reader.

No Dock icon, no window to manage. The reader floats above your work without taking focus, so the app you’re reading from keeps its selection.

  • Follows alongOne sentence at a time, with the current word in a soft, rounded highlight.
  • Hide it, keep listeningClose the reader and playback carries on.
  • 0.75× to 2×Change speed any time, mid-sentence.
  • Your Mac’s voicesUses the voices installed on your Mac, including Enhanced and Premium ones you download.
  • Kokoro, on your MacA natural-sounding neural voice that runs on the Mac itself, word highlight and all. A one-time 327 MB download, on Macs with Apple silicon and macOS 15 or later.
  • Shortcuts you chooseRead the selection, a screenshot, the browser’s article or the paragraph under the pointer; pause, stop, skip or change speed. Rebind or turn off any of them; clashes are explained, not silent.
  • Honest when it can’tNothing selected, or no text in the image? You get a plain message, not silence.
  • Shortcuts and SiriRead selected text, the clipboard, a file or the browser’s article, pause, stop or change speed from the Shortcuts app, or ask Siri.
  • Play and pause anywhereAdd a play-pause control to Control Center or the menu bar on macOS 26.
  • Read with AloudSelect text in any app, or a file in Finder, and choose Read with Aloud or Read File with Aloud from the Services menu.
  • Go to PageJump straight to any page of a PDF. Ticks on the progress bar mark where each page starts.
  • Themes and focus modePaper, Sepia, Night or High Contrast pages. Focus mode clears away everything but the page and dims all but the paragraph being read.
  • Automatic updatesChecks for updates once a day and asks before installing one.
  • Web articlesRead the article on the front tab of Safari or Chrome, without the menus, ads and captions. The browser hands over the page it already has; nothing is downloaded again.
  • Picks up where you left offReopen a recent reading from the menu bar and carry on from the sentence where you stopped.
  • Leaves out the noiseWeb addresses are read as the site’s name, and citations like [12] and footnote marks are skipped. The page still shows everything.
  • Your pronunciationsTell Aloud once how to say a name or a bit of jargon, and it says it that way wherever it appears.
  • Save as audioExport any reading as an .m4a file in your chosen voice, with the same skips and pronunciations, to play anywhere.
  • Sleep timerStop at the end of the paragraph, or after 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes.
  • Bring your own voiceHave an ElevenLabs or Cartesia account? Add your API key and read with their voices, word highlight and all. The key stays in your Mac’s Keychain and the service bills you directly.

Privacy

What you read stays on your Mac unless you pick a cloud voice.

Apple voices, the Kokoro voice and text recognition run on your Mac. There is no account and no telemetry. Aloud goes online only to activate a license, check for updates, and download the Kokoro voice if you choose it. Text is sent to ElevenLabs or Cartesia only when you choose to read with their voices, using your own key.

  • Reading with Apple or Kokoro voices never touches the network
  • Apple and Kokoro voices work the same on a plane
  • No account, no sign-in
  • No analytics or telemetry

Permissions, plainly

Accessibility
Lets Aloud read the text you’ve selected in other apps. Optional: the right-click service works without it.
Screen Recording
Only for the screenshot shortcut, so Aloud can capture the area you choose.
Automation
Only for reading a web article, so Aloud can ask Safari or Chrome for the page on its front tab.

Pricing

Pay once. That’s the whole model.

$19

one time, per Mac

Buy Aloud · $19

Secure checkout through Lemon Squeezy. License key emailed after checkout.

  • 3 days, everything unlocked. The trial starts when you first open the app. No card, no account.
  • No subscription. You aren’t renting your ears. One price, one key.
  • Selection, PDFs and screenshots. All three ways to read are in the one price.
  • After the trial, Aloud asks for a license key before it reads again.

Questions

Straight answers.

Can I buy it today?

Yes. Buy opens checkout. After you pay, your license key is emailed. The app includes a 3-day trial from the first time you open it.

macOS already has Speak Selection. Why Aloud?

Speak Selection is good for a quick read and Aloud doesn’t replace it. Aloud adds what it lacks: PDFs that skip headers and footers, reading from screenshots and images, and a small reader that shows the sentence and word being spoken.

What voices does it use?

The voices installed on your Mac, including the Enhanced and Premium ones you can download in System Settings. They’re all on-device. If you have an ElevenLabs or Cartesia account, you can add your own API key in Settings and read with their voices too; they bill you for what you use. On a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 15 or later, you can also download Kokoro, a natural-sounding voice that runs on your Mac (327 MB, once).

Does it ever go online?

Reading with Apple or Kokoro voices never uses the network. Aloud goes online only to activate a license, check for updates, and download the Kokoro voice if you choose it. Text is sent to ElevenLabs or Cartesia only when you choose to read with their voices.

Does it read scanned PDFs and photos of text?

Yes. Pages with almost no embedded text, and any image you capture or open, are recognised on your Mac. Multi-column layouts can read out of order, because the order follows how the text is found.

What do I need?

A Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Accessibility permission for reading selections in other apps, and Screen Recording permission for the screenshot shortcut. The Kokoro voice needs a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 15 or later; other Macs read with Apple voices.

Is there a subscription?

No. It’s $19 once, per Mac.