How to Convert Voice to Text on a Mac. By: Ellis Davidson. Converting text to speech is very full-featured, but the built-in speech recognition system is much more limited. You can work with the built-in services in some cases, but you may need a more full-fledged dictation software.
Active2 years, 4 months ago
I love the text to Speech feature of Mac OS X. Since I'm not a native English speaker I'm very happy about all the additional languages added since Lion came out. However, I do use English as well as my native language (German). Changing voices is a bit of a pain. It just requires too many steps to be comfortable.
Is there any way to make this easy? I was looking for shortcuts, maybe a drop down menu somwhere up in the right corner, anything would be fine.
Since my search was not successful, I hope to find some advice here on SuperUser. Thanks a lot!
cuRoman
user83946
4 Answers![]()
I have used FastScripts to assign a shortcut to this script:
You could also create a service in Automator:
There is a bug in 10.7 and 10.8 where the shortcuts for Automator services don't always work until you hover over the services menu from the menu bar. WorkflowServiceRunner can also use over 100% CPU while speaking text.
Another option would be to use UI scripting to change between two voices:
Changing the SelectedVoiceID key in com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist also works, but I don't know how to apply the changes immediately.
LriLri
32.6k55 gold badges9595 silver badges135135 bronze badges
Excel for mac select cells with containing specific text. Thank you very much Lauryi.
I have extended your UI scripting approach to work properly with german and english voices.The problem is, when your system language is not english, all non system languages are hidden (if not currently selected). You have to select: show more voices. first to get to the desired language. My code lack a bit of elegance, but works. Here it is (updated):
kantordekantorde
Direct changes to
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist are not really needed if you get the bash-script Voices which really adds all the command-line functionality you need.
An Apple Script to change the standard voice to Alex using Voices would simply look like this:
I do prefer the terminal, and instead of testing the polyglot menu-bar intrusion, I made this (admittedly simple-stupid) shell script (which uses voices) for my language-switching needs. With it, All I do to change the default language is to pop into the terminal to type
speak swedish or speak french . This fits excellently into my workflow. I hope you can find a solution that fits yours.
I save it to my scripts as 'speak.command', chmod it +x, and add the appropriate alias to my .bash_profile to evoke it by typing
speak .
Josef LilljegrenJosef Lilljegren
I Wrote a Status Bar Tool for that:
Apperantly it still works in Sierra
Fred FlüggeFred Flügge
Active2 years, 4 months ago
I love the text to Speech feature of Mac OS X. Since I'm not a native English speaker I'm very happy about all the additional languages added since Lion came out. However, I do use English as well as my native language (German). Changing voices is a bit of a pain. It just requires too many steps to be comfortable.
Is there any way to make this easy? I was looking for shortcuts, maybe a drop down menu somwhere up in the right corner, anything would be fine.
Since my search was not successful, I hope to find some advice here on SuperUser. Thanks a lot!
cuRoman
user83946
4 Answers
I have used FastScripts to assign a shortcut to this script:
You could also create a service in Automator:
There is a bug in 10.7 and 10.8 where the shortcuts for Automator services don't always work until you hover over the services menu from the menu bar. WorkflowServiceRunner can also use over 100% CPU while speaking text.
Mac Voice To Text
Another option would be to use UI scripting to change between two voices:
Changing the SelectedVoiceID key in com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist also works, but I don't know how to apply the changes immediately.
LriLri
32.6k55 gold badges9595 silver badges135135 bronze badges
Thank you very much Lauryi.
I have extended your UI scripting approach to work properly with german and english voices.The problem is, when your system language is not english, all non system languages are hidden (if not currently selected). You have to select: show more voices. first to get to the desired language. My code lack a bit of elegance, but works. Here it is (updated):
kantordekantorde
Direct changes to
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist are not really needed if you get the bash-script Voices which really adds all the command-line functionality you need.
An Apple Script to change the standard voice to Alex using Voices would simply look like this:
I do prefer the terminal, and instead of testing the polyglot menu-bar intrusion, I made this (admittedly simple-stupid) shell script (which uses voices) for my language-switching needs. With it, All I do to change the default language is to pop into the terminal to type
speak swedish or speak french . This fits excellently into my workflow. I hope you can find a solution that fits yours.
Click the Format tab (the purple contextual tab that appears next to the Home tab), and then under Text Box, click Change text alignment within the text box. Click the alignment option that you want. To flush text along the right side of the page, press Ctrl+R or click the Align Right command button. This type of alignment is also known as ragged left or flush right. You can right-justify text on a single line by using a right-align tab. How to change align of text in word for mac. On the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, click Align Left, Center Text, Align Right, or Justify Text. Or, click click Indent More or Indent Less to add or change indentation on your entire paragraph.
I save it to my scripts as 'speak.command', chmod it +x, and add the appropriate alias to my .bash_profile to evoke it by typing
speak .
Josef LilljegrenJosef Lilljegren
Voices For Mac Text To Speech Os9 Airport
I Wrote a Status Bar Tool for that:
Apperantly it still works in Sierra
Mac Text To Speech Voices
Fred FlüggeFred Flügge
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |