How to make your Mac read text aloud

Quick answerGo to System Settings → Accessibility → Read & Speak (called Spoken Content on macOS 14 Sonoma and 15 Sequoia), turn on Speak selection, select text in any app and press Option-Esc.

Method 1: Speak Selection (built in, free)

1. Open Accessibility settings. Choose Apple menu → System Settings → Accessibility → Read & Speak (called Spoken Content on macOS 14 Sonoma and 15 Sequoia).
2. Turn on Speak selection. Switch on Speak selection.
3. Select text. In any app, select the text you want to hear.
4. Press the shortcut. Press Option-Esc. Press it again to stop.

Click the info button next to Speak selection to change the shortcut, highlight words or sentences as they're read, and show a small controller for speed and skipping. The full walkthrough is in how to turn on Speak Selection.

Method 2: Edit → Speech → Start Speaking

Many apps, including TextEdit, Notes, Pages, Mail and Safari, have Edit → Speech → Start Speaking. Select text first, or in some apps leave nothing selected to hear the whole document. Choose Stop Speaking from the same menu to stop. No setup needed.

Method 3: VoiceOver

VoiceOver (Command-F5) is the Mac's full screen reader. It describes everything on screen and changes how you control the Mac, so it's the right tool for blind and low-vision users but more than most people need just to hear an article.

When an app helps

The built-in tools read what you can select. People usually go looking for something more when they hit one of these:

• Nothing happens. Some apps don't expose their text to macOS, so Speak Selection just plays a sound.
• PDFs read the junk. Running headers, page numbers and footnote markers are read out on every page.
• The text isn't text. Screenshots, slides in a video call, and scanned pages can't be selected.
• Long reads. There's nowhere to follow along comfortably, and no way to pick up where you stopped.

The same job with Aloud

1. Install Aloud and open it. It lives in the menu bar.
2. Select text in any app and press ⌃⌥S, or right-click and choose Services → Read with Aloud (the Services route needs no permissions).
3. A small reader appears in the notch or as a floating player, highlighting each word. Open the reading window to click any sentence and jump there.
4. For a screenshot or scanned page, press ⌃⌥O and drag a box around the text. For the article in your browser, press ⌃⌥A.