Change Spoken Content preferences for accessibility on Mac

On your Mac, use the Spoken Content pane of Accessibility preferences to customise the system voice, be notified when an alert or app needs your attention, and set other options for content your Mac can speak aloud.

To change these preferences, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Accessibility, then click Spoken Content.

Open the Spoken Content pane for me

Option	Description
System Voice	Choose a voice to speak text and alerts; click Play to hear a sample. See Change the voice your Mac uses to speak text.
Speaking Rate	Set the speed at which text is spoken.
Speak announcements	Have your Mac announce and speak alerts. See Have your Mac speak alert messages. To customise, click Options, then select a voice, the phrase you want to hear (such as the app name or “Attention!”) before an alert is spoken, and how long your Mac waits before it speaks the alert. Click Play to hear a sample.
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 customise, click Options: 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: Click the pop-up menu, then choose to have spoken words, sentences or both highlighted. Click the “Word colour” and “Sentence colour” pop-up menus to choose the highlight colour, or to use the default colour. If you don’t want spoken content highlighted, choose Never from the Highlight content pop-up menu. Sentence style: Click the pop-up menu to choose how to indicate sentences as they’re spoken (Underline or Background Colour). Show controller: Click the pop-up menu to choose when to show the controller (Automatically, Never or Always).
Speak items under the pointer	Have your Mac identify items under the pointer, either all the time or only when you use zoom. You can also set the verbosity level (High, Medium or Low) and whether to have your Mac wait a shorter or longer time before speaking.
Speak typing feedback	Have your Mac speak what you type, select or press using the keyboard. To customise Typing Feedback, click Options: Echo characters: Your Mac speaks each character you type. Echo words: Your Mac speaks each word you type. Echo selection changes: Your Mac speaks each time you select something on the screen. Echo modifier keys: Your Mac speaks each modifier key you press.

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 aloud what appears on your screen. To quickly turn off VoiceOver, press Option-Command-F5 (or if your Mac or Magic Keyboard has Touch ID, quickly press Touch ID three times), then deselect the Enable VoiceOver option.

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macOS User Guide

Change Spoken Content preferences for accessibility on Mac