How to read a scanned PDF or screenshot aloud on Mac (OCR)

Why normal read-aloud fails on scans

Read-aloud needs a text layer. Scans, photos and many screenshots only have pixels, so selecting text does nothing.

Built-in way: Live Text and Speak Selection

1. Open the scan or image in Preview.
2. Select text with Live Text (drag over it) and copy or keep it selected.
3. Press Option-Esc with Speak Selection turned on (how).

Limits: one selection at a time, and headers and page numbers are read too.

With Aloud

1. Press Control-Option-O.
2. Drag over the page, scan or screenshot.
3. Text recognition runs on your Mac and the text opens in the reader with the current word highlighted.

Nothing is uploaded for recognition.

Tips for better accuracy

• Zoom in so the text is large on screen before you capture.
• Capture one column at a time on multi-column pages.
• Printed text works best; handwriting is unreliable.

Save it as audio

Any reading can be exported as an .m4a file. See export text to audio. For text PDFs, see how to read a PDF aloud.