Text to speech for students on Mac: PDFs, readings and notes

Short answerUse Speak Selection for short passages. For course PDFs, Aloud (ours, $19 once, not a subscription) skips running headers, footers and page numbers, rejoins hyphenated words, reads scanned pages and resumes where you stopped. You can also export a reading to .m4a and listen on a walk.

Start with what your Mac already has

1. Turn on Speak Selection. Open System Settings → Accessibility → Read & Speak (called Spoken Content on macOS 14 and 15) and switch on Speak selection.
2. Download a better voice. Choose System voice → Manage Voices and download an Enhanced or Premium voice in your language.
3. Read any selection. Select text and press Option-Esc. Press it again to stop.
4. Set a comfortable speed. Use the Speaking rate slider in the same settings.

Good uses for students

• Hear a reading before class, following the highlight.
• Proofread essays by listening.
• Listen to research papers and scanned PDFs.
• Export text to audio for the commute.

Make it easier with Aloud

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

• 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.