

If you aren’t happy with the default system voice, you can add new high quality voices very easily.

To speak all text, hit Command+A to select all, followed by the Option+Escape keyboard shortcut, and all words will be spoken using the Mac text-to-speech feature that’s bundled in both Mac OS and iOS. Once this is enabled, select any text then hit Option+Escape to speak the text in the system voice. Choose the “Dictation & Speech” panel then select the “Text to Speech” tab.Open System Preferences from the Apple menu.In earlier Mac OS X releases, here’s how to enable the text to speech keyboard shortcut: How to Enable Speech Keystroke in Mac OS X

Earlier Mac versions can also enable a keystroke for text-to-speech but it’s in a slightly different location, which we’ll cover next. This works in all modern MacOS releases, including Monterey, Big Sur, Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, and El Capitan. You can immediately test this out by going to any document or web page and selecting text (or selecting all with Command + A if you want to keep entirely to keystrokes) and then hitting OPTION + ESC keys to begin speaking the text.
