How to Make Your Mac Read Out Loud to You

Listen to this blog post!

As promised, here's how to make your Mac read out loud to you. It's very handy.

UPDATED September 4th, 2014: see end of this post for additional info.

Let's start with Mail.
Mail will read out loud any selected text. So, if you get a long email, click in the body of it, do a Select All (or Command-A), and then go to Edit/Speech/Start Speaking. Very easy.


Now, let's look at Safari.
Safari will also read out loud any selected text. It's exactly the same as Mail: Edit/Speech/Start Speaking. If you use Safari's "Reader" feature, you'll have an easier time selecting the text you want. Reader hides "web junk" and leaves you with nothing but the article. Here's an example.

First, here's a web page. There's a story in there but there's a lot of other junk there too. It's a little distracting. And, it prevents you from selecting just the story when you do a Select All because all of the other stuff gets selected too.


This is what Reader's for. It turns a web page like the one above into a web page like the one below.

Nice and neat! No distractions! Plus, if you do Command-A here, you'll get just the story.

Swtich to "Reader" mode by clicking the gray Reader button in the address bar. Here's what it looks like:


Click it again to make Reader go away. (Reader is worth knowing about even if you're not going to have the page read to you out loud. Use it any time you want to hide a web page's clutter and focus on the story. The button disappears if Safari doesn't think it can figure out what the story is.)

Not all programs can read out loud the way Mail and Safari can, and of the ones the can, not all do it via Edit/Speech/Start Speaking. Some programs require you to select the text, then control-click on it to reveal a "Speech/Start Speaking" pop-up menu item. You may need to experiment with this a bit but it's worth it. Pages is one such program. Very handy, by the way, to have your writing read back to you.

Finally, let's have a look at the voice itself, and how you can control it. The voices on the Mac are far better, and far more configurable, than the ones on the iPhone and iPad. The way you do it is you go to the Apple menu, then to System Preferences, then to Speech. In the Speech section, switch to the Text to Speech section and you'll be given the option to chance voices. Try the various voices, and try adjusting the rate to hear how things sound. You can click the Play button to hear a sample sentence. I like Alex at the normal rate, FYI.

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There are a few shortcomings (you can't choose the voice, you can't do Select All in iBooks or Safari, and you can't trigger it from Siri), but even so, Speak Selection is worth exploring.

Up next: I'll show you how to do the same thing on your Mac.

UPDATE September 4th, 2014: I've just learned about the SoundGecko website. It will read a web page to you. For example, this one! Try it now by clicking below:

Listen to this blog post

It isn't instant, but it's close (about a minute's delay). And, there are lots of cool options (in a nice iOS app, and also on the SoundGecko website), and it's free for the basic service. I'll write a separate blog post on it someday soon.

Here's a SoundGecko feature I could not resist telling you about: it has the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed, giving you an updating set of articles for a particular blog... such as this one! It's easy as pie.

1. If you don't have a SoundGecko account yet, create one by clicking here and following the directions. Do it from your Mac (or even a PC)-- it makes the next steps easier.


2. Click the tab that says "Service Settings & Feeds."


3. Scroll down and click the button that says "Add Custom RSS." Type in ioperating.blogspot.com, click the Add RSS Feed button, and you're done.

If you have an iPhone or iPad you'll want to get the SoundGecko iOS app (free), of course. With it, in addition to being able to listen to blog posts, you can have SoundGecko read a web page to you on the fly. Here's how it looks.

One advantage of having SoundGecko read a web page for you instead of doing it by selecting and clicking "Play" is that there's no selecting! The selecting is the hardest part as there's no "Select All" in Safari for iOS. Anyhow, give it a try. You don't even need an account to do that. But you'll want a SoundGecko account because you can manage things from your Mac, and have the ready-to-listen-to files show up on your iPhone or iPad. There are other reasons too.

Give it a try and let me know what you think, in the comments section below.

Two ways to get a free iPod Touch

Apple’s giving away an iPod Touch with purchase of a MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or iMac. Actually, it’s a rebate thing, so you have to pay for it first, then submit the receipt, and wait for your money to come back. And, you can only take advantage of the deal if you’re going to college, or work at a college, or something like that. You can read all about it here.

If you don’t qualify for the rebate you may be interested in an offer from another company: Ferrari. They are giving away an iPod Touch with purchase of every Scuderia Spider 16M. Here are the details on that. You might want to hurry as I hear that they are only making 499 of these cars and when they’re gone, they’re gone. It’s a convertible, by the way. Here’s a picture.



No matter how you get it, even if you have to pay for it, an iPod Touch is a groovy device. I would wait until Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference kicks off June 8th before buying one because there just might be a new model coming out soon-- and if there is, we’ll learn all about it June 8th. Watch this space for further information.

iPhone Sliiiiiiide Technique

If you're an iPhone user you know that accurate pointing leads to efficient use. Actually, it's the other way around: inaccurate pointing leads to inefficient use. It's not easy to be accurate when your finger's bigger than the buttons and keys and controls on the iPhone's screen, but it turns out there's a useful technique that will help you when you're off the mark. In a nutshell, it's this: if you touch the wrong key, don't let go-- just sliiiiiiiiide to the right key, and then let go. For example:

Here I'm in the middle of writing a text message. I want to write "Stop it" and I've gotten as far as the "S." When I go for the "t" I miss and land on the "r."

You can see it in the picture below.

Do I accept that "r" and then delete it and then try for the "t" again? No! Instead, when I see that "R" indicating that I hit the wrong letter I simply sliiiiiiide over one letter, wait for the "T" to show, and then I let go. Ahhhh-- that feels good.

Here's what it looks like.



This technique works other places too. Here's one example that I use all the time: in Contacts, you get that TINY A-Z list at the right.



Supposedly you're able to touch a letter in that list and jump to the that letter in your Contacts file. More times than not I don't land where I want to-- but with the sliiiiiiiide technique I just keep my finger down and sliiiiiiide to the proper letter, and then let go.

Here's what it looks like when you touch and HOLD (yes, the list turns gray):



Keep the "sliiiiiide" technique in mind for the next time you touch the wrong spot on your iPhone's screen. It makes correcting an error as easy as making one.

I have likened this method to playing checkers: your move isn't official until you let go. Maybe that will help you remember.