Create a Text to Speech Shortcut in System Preferences

Text to Speech was one of the minor but significant improvements made in Leopard, and the improvement comes in the form of a new voice named Alex. Though it’s not a perfect substitute for a human voice, Alex is a great leap forward when compared with any voice included with Tiger. Have a listen and hear the difference for yourself.

Vicki, Tiger’s default voice:

The vastly improved Leopard voice Alex:

Text to Speech is really handy if you have a long article to read but have to be away from the computer for whatever reason. It’s also good for proofing your own writing before sending it off to its destination.

To fire up the feature, highlight some text in your browser or text editor and go to Services in the application menu. Scroll down to Speech >> Start Speaking Text and your Mac will read off whatever you have highlighted. Not difficult, but if you use the feature with any regularity, all that scrolling can become a time consuming affair. Under Tiger, my solution came in the form of a simple AppleScript that I attached to a Quicksilver trigger. But the script didn’t seem to work consistently or with some applications, even though they were supported. I still found myself navigating the services menu from time to time, which, after spending the time to write the AppleScript (I’m a bit of a novice on that front), was more frustrating than if I hadn’t made the script at all.

Luckily, my Text to Speech access woes were answered in Leopard. Go to the Speech preference pane in System Preferences and you’ll see the new option to assign a keyboard shortcut for Start Speaking Text (click on the image right to enlarge). I’ve set it for control + option + S (as of yet, I haven’t had this interfere with any other shortcut, but it’s easy to change if it does).

By no means is Text to Speech appropriate for all situations, but now that there is an easy way to create a shortcut to access the feature, I find myself using it far more often. Thanks Apple!