

- #Download voices for os x terminal how to
- #Download voices for os x terminal install
- #Download voices for os x terminal software
- #Download voices for os x terminal download
- #Download voices for os x terminal mac
A yellow warning sign appearing beside the checked voice indicates that it is one of the new high-quality voices that you can obtain for free.
#Download voices for os x terminal download
In the Customize pane, you can sample all voices and select ones to download and install.īy ticking a checkbox, the selected voice will be added to your working list of ones shown in the System Voice popup menu. Simply select a voice and click the Play button. Notice that you can play a sample of any voice without actually having it installed. High-quality voice, Alex, is pre-installed. This will reveal a pane containing quite a few other voices available in several languages. The checked one is the currently selected System Voice.įor the really good stuff, select Customize at the bottom of the System Voice pop-up list. The voices are organized by language, and the one marked with a check is the one currently set as your System Voice.Ĭlicking on System Voice pops up a list showing all the installed voices. The Dictation and Speech System Preferences panel in Mountain Lion.Ĭlick the System Voice pop-up menu to reveal voices already installed in your system. Once in the panel, be sure to click on the Text to Speech tab. Starting with Mountain Lion, this has been renamed to Dictation & Speech.
#Download voices for os x terminal install
But they are selectable, and you can sample them before deciding to automatically download and install them free-of-charge from Apple's servers.įor OS versions prior to Mountain Lion, the voice options and controls are located in the Speech System Preferences panel.
#Download voices for os x terminal software
Most of the high-quality voices are not pre-installed because the software voice files are quite large in size. Additionally, choices include international voices that will support several languages and dialects. Starting with OS X Lion, Alex, Samantha and several other high-quality voices are available for you to choose from. She is a Alex's sibling – a high-quality American English female voice which I find to be quite soothing and highly coherent.

But, he's overworked, and I have sent him out to pasture.Īllow me to introduce you to someone. It helps me to hear how my words flow and how clearly the concepts and ideas express themselves.Īlex is wonderful.


Having an entity read the article to me is invaluable. Simply reading to catch typos and punctuation errors is one thing.
#Download voices for os x terminal mac
Additionally, the higher quality voice is quite valuable to Mac users who might be learning english pronunciation and sentence formation.Īs for me, aside from the fact that text-to-speech is a huge help when my aging eyes are tired after a long day at the keyboard, I have found this capability to be incredibly useful as a proofreading tool for the very same articles you read in my How-To column here at TMO. The technology in Alex presents a huge advantage to those who, due to visual impairment, regularly require screen-reading capabilities. I began using Alex to read articles and other text to me while I was engaged doing something else, and I found that I no longer needed to listen closely, straining to understand what was being said. As a result of this vast improvement, I immediately found the use of synthetic speech to finally provide value for me. This mellifluous male voice included breath and pause control to augment comprehension of the spoken words and phrases. When OS X 10.5 Leopard was uncaged back in 2007, Apple included some new high-fidelity text-to-speech capabilities in the form of a single new voice called Alex.
#Download voices for os x terminal how to
In a bit,I'll show you how to try these out for yourself. Vestiges of early artificial-sounding voices are still present today as novelties for some light-hearted, geeky entertainment – or for the nostalgic. This was something from the future! The synthesized Mac voices were used to entertain many a Mac aficionado at user group meetings across the world. Nevertheless, back then, it was downright awe-inspiring. The Talking Moose provided many Mac old-timers with hours of silly fun.Įarly voices were highly robotic and astonishingly crude by today's standards. It sure is great to get out of that bag." Heck, we even used to have a talking moose! And, who can forget young Steve Jobs introducing the new Macintosh on-stage in 1984? Using software called MacinTalk, it announced itself to the world by saying, "Hello. This takes me back to the Mac's very early days in the mid-eighties when, even then, its operating system was outfitted with synthetic speech capabilities. As I write this, it's the Macintosh's 29th birthday.
