Note that the settings precise names are slightly different in various releases of macOS, eg “Speech” vs “Spoken Content”, but the setting and functionality itself is the same regardless. It’s pretty easy to get your Mac to speak the highlighted text, as you can see. Alternatively, you can right-click on the highlighted text, click on “Speech” and choose “Start Speaking”, or pull down the “Edit” menu and choose Speech from there. Open a supported app like Safari, Pages, Chrome, Word, etc, then highlight the text that you want to be read out, and hit the keyboard shortcut to activate it.Now, you can press any other key or key combination to set as the trigger for speak selection.However, you can switch to a different key by clicking on “Change Key”.

By default, you can activate this feature by simultaneously pressing Option and Esc keys. Check the box to speak selected text when the key is pressed.

Now, you’ll find the option to enable speak selection on your Mac.

Here, choose “Speech” or “Spoken Content” from the left pane, as shown below.

Click on “Accessibility” to proceed further.

This will open a new window on your screen.

Head over to “System Preferences” on your Mac from the Dock or  Apple menu.

Simply follow the steps below to get started. Your Mac doesn’t need to be running the latest macOS version, as this feature has been around for quite a while. Turning on Speak Selection is a fairly easy and straightforward procedure on a macOS system. Using Speak Selection to Speak Text on Mac Screen You could use Speak Selection wherever you’re able to select the text that’s displayed on the screen, including emails, web content, notes, ebooks, and more. With Speak Selection, Mac users have complete control over when it is activated too. This is just one of the many accessibility features that macOS has to offer. Speak Selection does what it says, basically you select text on the screen, and then allow the Mac to speak it to you using text-to-speech capabilities.

Mac speak text