Platform Availability: Mac OS X. SEE ALSO: 10 Best Audio Recording Software. Less reading, more listening! Text to speech (TTS) software take almost all the hassle out of consuming digital textual, making the entire thing faster and more convenient. And as seen above, there are plenty of such solutions available. Desktop Mac and Windows versions uses your default browser and java to drive a webapp. On linux you'll have to straight up use the website or run a virtual machine. On the Mac and Windows the 'desktop app' is more than just a shortcut to the website. What is the best speech-to-text for OS X? Update Cancel. Ad by Filestack. Are there any text-to-speech products for Mac OS X which have a speech quality that rivals IVONA's speech synthesis quality? What is the best speech to text software? What is the best tool to search text files on one's hard-drive (Mac OS X)?
Choose Apple () menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, then click Dictation. Turn on Dictation and choose from these Dictation options:
Choose whether to use Enhanced Dictation, which lets you use dictation when you're not connected to the Internet.
Choose your language and dialect. Some languages, such as English, have multiple dialects.
Choose the keyboard shortcut you will use to start start dictating.
Choose your preferred microphone from the pop-up menu below the microphone icon.
In macOS Sierra, you can ask Siri to “turn on Dictation” for you. Siri isn't the same as Dictation, but you can ask Siri to compose short messages, such as email and text messages.
The Best Text To Speech
Use Dictation
Go to a document or other text field and place the insertion point where you want your dictated text to appear.
Press the keyboard shortcut for starting dictation, or choose Edit > Start Dictation. The default shortcut is Fn Fn (press the Fn key twice). When your Mac is listening, it displays a microphone to the left or right of the page, aligned with the insertion point. If you turn on advanced dictation commands, the microphone appears in the lower-right corner of your screen, and you can drag it to another position. When your Mac can hear you, the input meter inside the microphone rises and falls as you speak.
Speak the words that you want your Mac to type. Dictation learns the characteristics of your voice and adapts to your accent, so the more you use it, the better it understands you. If it doesn't understand you, learn what to do.
To stop dictating, click Done below the microphone icon, press Fn once, or switch to another window.
Speak the following words to enter punctuation or other characters. These may vary by language or dialect.
roman numeral (formats next phrase as Roman numeral)
new paragraph (adds paragraph break)
no space on (formats next phrase without spaces)
no space off (resumes default spacing)
tab key (advances cursor to the next tab stop)
If you turned on Enhanced Dictation, you can also use dictation commands to bold, italicize, underline, select, copy, delete, undo, and perform other actions.
About Enhanced Dictation
Enhanced Dictation is available in OS X Mavericks v10.9 or later. With Enhanced Dictation:
You can dictate continuously.
You can dictate without being connected to the Internet.
Your words might convert to text more quickly.
You can use dictation commands to tell your Mac what to do.
Without Enhanced Dictation, your spoken words and certain other data are sent to Apple to be converted into text and help your Mac understand what you mean. As a result, your Mac must be connected to the Internet, your words might not convert to text as quickly, and you can speak for no more than 40 seconds at a time (30 seconds in OS X Yosemite or earlier).
If you're on a business or school network that uses a proxy server, Dictation might not be able to connect to the Internet. Have your network administrator refer to the list of network ports used by Apple software products.
About Dictation and privacy
To learn about Dictation and privacy, choose Apple () menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, click Dictation, then click the About Dictation & Privacy button. At all times, information collected by Apple is treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy.
Learn more
To use dictation on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, tap the microphone on the onscreen keyboard, then speak. Consult your iPhone or iPad user guide for details.
If the Slow Keys or Sticky Keys feature is turned on in the Accessibility pane of System Preferences, the default keyboard shortcuts for dictation might not work. If you need to use those accessibility features, create a custom dictation shortcut: Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, click Dictation, then choose “Customize” from the Shortcut menu.
Speech Central can read aloud web pages, browse web pages and RSS feeds (allowing you to enqueue the reading of the articles while headlines are read), documents and e-books for you while you are doing something else. The app can create a speech or audio file from any page that you browse inside the app or by pasting a link of an internet page from any other app. The text to read and its language will be detected automatically. It can also read Microsoft Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx), PDF, emails (.eml) and many other text file and ebook formats (.epub, .fb2) and turn them into the speech.
Speech Text software, free download
By using the app you'll build your knowledge base in an easy way. Each read item is automatically moved to the Old Articles which supports powerful search and filtering features. Those texts are always available offline. Annotation tools are there to mark an item as favorite, or bookmark an important paragraph in it. You can use app with any of supported languages for text to speech on macOS. Latest macOS features including the Touch Bar are supported.
Reinvent your life, if you are busy cut the time you spend in front of the screen and listen to the news articles, documents and e-books while you are doing housework or even commuting and jogging (by using the audio files). For people with visual impairments and disability like dyslexia this can be a great assistive technology as the app is tested to be fully accessible with VoiceOver.