Text to speech for Mac

Select anything.
Read it Aloud.

Highlight any text, file, or folder. Follow along or listen in the background. Nothing is uploaded. No account required.

Download for Mac Requires macOS 26 and Apple silicon.

Hold option⌥ as you select text in any app, and listen.

The Aloud library in dark mode: three folders with pages showing over their pockets, documents with their time left, and the player bar along the bottom

Weekly syncShipping the folder view next, then the ring while the voice starts. Open question on the seam length.

Kokoro warms up in about a second. The card should show the ring for that second and no longer; nobody wants a spinner that outlives the sound.

Next week: the listening pass on the new chunk plan, and the hero on the landing page.

Q3 planningThree bets, one of them the reader. Nothing leaves the Mac, no account, and a week to try all of it.

The reader is the bet that matters. If people follow the highlight through a whole paper, the library becomes the place their reading lives, and the hotkey becomes a habit rather than a trick.

The other two are voices and speed. Both are cheap to try and easy to undo.

Design reviewThe pill labels read better than the caps. Keep the gradient on the word Aloud and nowhere else.

The folders work. The pages over the lip tell them apart from across the room, which was the point. The glass could be a touch lighter on the light window.

The footer should end the page on a plate, with the wordmark running off the bottom edge.

Attention and the pileMost reading is not stopped by difficulty but by the size of the pile. When a reader sees a document as one of forty, the cost of starting outweighs the promise of finishing.

We asked forty readers to keep a week's log of what they meant to read and what they read. The gap was not in hard texts. It was in long ones, saved for later and never opened again.

Listening as readingWe compare comprehension across silent reading, listening, and the two together, at speeds from one to three times.

Comprehension held at one and a half times for every reader and fell away past two for most. Those who listened and followed the text did best at every speed, and said the words were easier to hold on to.

A grammar of pausesSpeakers pause at clause boundaries, not at random. A synthetic voice that cuts elsewhere is heard as stopping mid-thought.

We mark the places a speaker would pause, from full stops down to the commas around a clause, and cut the text there. Listeners rated the cut speech as more natural, and remembered more of it a day later.

The harbourThe morning was bright and cold, and the sea beyond the harbour wall lay perfectly still.

Gulls stood on the posts of the old jetty, facing into a wind that was not there. A boat went out with two men in it, and the sound of its engine came back across the water long after it had turned the point.

On being wrongNobody really teaches you research. You get a desk, a problem someone else picked, and a vague sense that everyone knows what they are doing.

Most of what I learned this year I learned by being wrong in front of people who were kind about it. The first thing I got wrong was thinking the work was the reading.

The letterShe had meant to write the letter that evening, but the light went, and the kitchen grew cold, and in the end she read instead.

The book was one she had begun twice before. This time she kept on past the place where she had always stopped, and when she looked up the tea beside her had gone cold.

How it works

One key to start. A habit by Friday.

Papers come out clean, Markdown is read as prose, and anything you can select can be heard. Here is the whole gesture.

fn control option⌥ command⌘ command⌘

Hold `⌥`

Keep Option down in any app. Safari, Mail, Slack, Preview, Obsidian. Anywhere you would normally read.

It's been a fast year.

Nobody really teaches you research. You get a desk, a problem someone else picked, and a vague sense that everyone around you knows what they are doing. Most of what I learned this year I learned by being wrong.

Select the text

Drag across it, double-click a word, or triple-click a paragraph. When you let go, a small card drops down under the notch wearing the icon of the app it came from.

It's been a fast year.

Listen

The voice starts on its own. The card holds the sentence being read, each word lit as it is said, and the reading carries on after you close the window.

Download for Mac Or select first and press ⌥ Space, which can be rebound in Settings.

The library

Point it at the folders you already have.

Aloud reads .md, .txt, and .pdf where they sit and never copies or uploads them. Make a folder from the library and drag documents into it. Each folder shows the first pages of what is inside over the lip of its pocket, so you can tell your papers from your meeting notes from across the room.

Obsidian vaults Markdown Plain text PDF

Meeting notes 2

Papers 3

Weekend reading 4

The reader

Follow along, or don't.

The sentence being read is highlighted as the voice moves through it. Click any sentence to jump there. Skip back or forward 10 seconds, always to a sentence boundary, and change speed on the sentence you are on. Every document remembers where you stopped and is marked Finished at the end.

Sans or serif Five text sizes Light or dark Edit in place

The Aloud reader in dark mode reading Managing Agents, From First Principles, with one sentence highlighted and the player bar below

Everywhere on your Mac

It keeps playing outside the player.

Close the window and the voice carries on. The menu bar player shows the sentence being read and changes the voice, the speed and the level without the window. The media keys and AirPods work, the Now Playing card in Control Center shows what is playing, and it pauses when you unplug your headphones.

Menu bar player Media keys AirPods Control Center Pauses on unplug

Managing Agents, From First Principles

Open Aloud

Features

Not just a voice. Built for how you actually read.

Follows along

The sentence and the word being read are highlighted. Click any sentence to jump to it.

J. Reading Res.Vol. 12 · 2024

2. Why reading stalls

Most reading is not stopped by difficulty but by the size of the pile. When a reader sees a docu- ment as one of forty, the cost of starting outweighs the promise.

Cleans PDFs first

Running headers, page numbers, and hyphen breaks are removed before the voice sees them.

Remembers your place

Every document picks up where you stopped and is marked Finished at the end. Bookmark from the reader or its card.

🇬🇧

🇺🇸

Kokoro voices

Seven neural voices Apple does not ship, four American and three British. One download of about 160 MB, then they run entirely on your Mac.

notes.md

## Reading list

- **Papers** that _matter_

- [Slack thread](https://…)

| Voice | Speed |

> Nobody teaches you research.

```swift · 14 lines

Aloud says

Reading list.

Papers that matter.

Slack thread.

Voice, Speed.

Nobody teaches you research.

Code block.

Reads Markdown as prose

Headings, lists, links, and tables come out the way a person would say them. Code blocks can be skipped.

Eleven speeds

From 0.5× to 3×, a quarter apart. Skip back or forward 10 seconds, always to a sentence boundary.

Every voice on your Mac

Preview any system voice before picking one, with seven recommended voices at the top of the list.

Nothing leaves your Mac

No account, no upload, no telemetry. Your files and the text you select stay on your Mac.

Search everything

Titles and full text across every folder, as you type. Select cards like Finder, and act on the whole selection at once.

Questions

Before you download.

Aloud is text to speech for your Mac. It reads anything you select, and the notes, papers and PDFs in your folders, with voices that run on the Mac itself.

How do I make my Mac read selected text aloud?

Hold Option as you select text in any app, such as Safari, Mail, Slack, Preview or Obsidian, and Aloud starts reading when you let go. Or select first and press ⌥ Space, which can be rebound in Settings. The first time, Aloud asks for the Accessibility permission, which is what lets it read a selection.

What can Aloud read?

Any text you can select in any app, web pages included, where a selected list or table keeps its items and rows. In the library it reads the Markdown, plain text and PDF files in the folders you add, Obsidian vaults included. PDFs lose their running headers, page numbers and hyphen breaks before the voice reaches them, and Markdown's headings, lists, links and tables are read the way a person would say them.

Which voices does Aloud use?

Every voice already on your Mac, each of which you can preview before picking it, with seven recommended voices at the top of the list. Aloud adds seven Kokoro voices too, neural voices Apple does not ship: four American and three British.

Does Aloud upload my files or the text I select?

No. Everything is read on your Mac, with the voices on your Mac. Files are read where they sit and never copied or uploaded, and there is no account, no analytics and no tracking. Aloud goes online for three things only, all to aloud.work: checking for updates once you allow it, downloading the Kokoro voices if you choose one, and renewing a subscriber's key.

Does Aloud work offline?

Yes. Every voice speaks on your Mac, so reading needs no connection. The Kokoro voices are one download of about 160 MB, and run offline from then on.

How is Aloud different from Spoken Content on the Mac?

Spoken Content, in the Mac's Accessibility settings, speaks a selection when you press a shortcut. Aloud starts reading the moment you select with Option held, keeps a library of your folders that remembers where you stopped in every document, cleans PDFs and reads Markdown as prose before speaking, and adds the Kokoro voices.

Which Macs does Aloud run on?

Any Mac with Apple silicon running macOS 26 or later.

Is Aloud free?

Aloud is free to try for 7 days, with everything in it and no account or card. After that, the library, the reader, search, bookmarks, every speed and every voice already on your Mac stay free for good. The Kokoro voices, ⌥ Space and reading as you select with Option held need a paid key, which the terms describe.

Select anything.Read it Aloud.