Make Preview read a PDF aloud on Mac

Short answerSelect text in Preview and choose Edit → Speech → Start Speaking, or press Option-Esc with Speak Selection on. For whole documents, Aloud ($19 once) reads the PDF in a reading window, skips headers and page numbers and resumes later.

Start with what your Mac already has

1. Open the PDF in Preview. Double-click it or right-click → Open With → Preview.
2. Select the text. Press Command-A on a page, or drag.
3. Start speaking. Edit → Speech → Start Speaking.

Related: read a PDF aloud on Mac.

Make it easier with Aloud

Aloud (ours, $19 once per Mac, macOS 14 or later) is built for listening every day:

• PDFs without the noise: Aloud skips running headers, footers and page numbers, rejoins hyphenated line breaks and recognises scanned pages on your Mac.
• Select text in any app and press Control-Option-S (or right-click → Services → Read with Aloud).
• A reading window with a word highlight and click-to-seek, so you can jump to any sentence.
• Speed from 0.75x to 2x, changed mid-sentence, and resume from the last sentence.
• Natural voices: your Mac's Enhanced and Premium voices, the on-device Kokoro neural voice (Apple silicon, macOS 15+), or ElevenLabs/Cartesia with your own API key.
• Private by default: with Apple or Kokoro voices nothing leaves your Mac; no account, no analytics in the app.

Buy Aloud, $19 once   No subscription, no account.