Change Read & Speak settings for accessibility on Mac

On your Mac, use Read & Speak settings to customize the system voice, hear text spoken aloud, be notified about announcements, and set other options for content your Mac can speak out loud.

To change these settings, choose Apple menu > System Settings, click Accessibility in the sidebar, then click Read & Speak. (You may need to scroll down.)

Open Read & Speak settings for me

Option	Description
Accessibility Reader	Read or listen to text and customize fonts, layout, and background colors. To customize, click and turn on Autoplay to have Accessibility Reader autoplay text. See Read or listen to text in apps with Accessibility Reader.
Speak selection	Have your Mac speak selected text when you press the specified keyboard shortcut. See Have your Mac speak text that’s on the screen. To customize, click : Keyboard shortcut: Press the key combination you want to use. For example, press the Option and Tab keys together to set the keyboard shortcut as Option+Tab. Highlight content: Choose to have spoken words, sentences, or both highlighted. If you don’t want spoken content highlighted, choose None. Word color: Choose the color used to highlight words as they’re spoken. Sentence color: Choose the color used to highlight sentences as they’re spoken. Sentence style: Choose how to indicate sentences as they’re spoken (Underline or “Background color”). Show controller: Choose when to show the controller (Automatically, Never, or Always).
Speak item under the pointer	Have your Mac identify items under the pointer. To customize, click , then choose when your Mac speaks the item (all the time or only when you use zoom); the level of detail (called verbosity): High, Medium, or Low; and how long to have your Mac wait before speaking.
Speak announcements	Have your Mac announce and speak dialogs and other announcements. See Have your Mac speak announcements. To customize, click , then select a voice, the phrase you want to hear (such as the app name or “Attention!”) before an announcement is spoken, and how long your Mac waits before it speaks. Click Play Sample to hear a sample.
Speak typing feedback	Have your Mac speak what you type or the keys you press. To customize, click : Echo characters: Your Mac speaks each character you type. Echo words: Your Mac speaks each word you type. Echo selection changes: When you use the arrow keys to move the insertion point forward or back, your Mac speaks the character to the right or left of the insertion point. Echo modifier keys: Your Mac speaks each modifier key you press, including the Caps Lock key.
System speech language	Choose the language you want your Mac to use to speak text and alerts, if different from the system language.
System voice	Choose a voice to speak text and alerts. Click to adjust settings for the voice, such as how fast or loud it speaks, or play a sample. See Change the voice your Mac uses to speak text. Note: Voices are not available in all languages. See the Apple Support article Languages supported by VoiceOver.
Detect languages	If you read text in multiple languages, have your Mac automatically switch between them when it speaks text. When this option is off, text is spoken using the system speech language you set (above).
Pronunciations	If you’ve defined custom pronunciations for Read & Speak, turn them on or off. To edit custom pronunciations, click .

You can set keyboard shortcuts to quickly turn on or off options like “Speak selection,” “Speak item under the pointer,” and “Speak typing feedback.” Choose Apple menu > System Settings, click Keyboard in the sidebar (you may need to scroll down), click Keyboard Shortcuts, then click Accessibility. See Use macOS keyboard shortcuts.

If your Mac is speaking even though you didn’t set options for it to do so, you may have inadvertently turned on VoiceOver, the built-in screen reader that describes out loud what appears on your screen. To turn VoiceOver off, press Command-F5. If your Mac or Magic Keyboard has Touch ID, press and hold the Command key while you quickly press Touch ID three times.

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Mac User Guide

Change Read & Speak settings for accessibility on Mac