Assign a keystroke to speech

Assign a keystroke to speech
Mac Tip #346, 09 July 2008

Recent MacTips described how to have your computer read some selected text aloud. But it’s annoying to have to go to the Services menu and then several submenus to start and stop the speech.

Assign a custom keystroke to make it quicker and easier to use.

Create a Keystroke

Go to the Speech pane of System Preferences, and select the Text to Speech tab.

Check the box labelled ‘Speak selected text when key is pressed’, and then click the Set Key button. A sheet appears.

Press the keys you’d like to use to start and stop speaking. You need to include one or more modifier keys, such as Command, Shift, Option or Control. Then click OK. I’ve set the keys Control Shift = on my machine.

Now select some text, press the keys you chose, and you should hear the computer reading the text aloud. The same key combination stops the speech.

Note: if you use Firefox you may have found that it doesn’t ‘do’ speech — at least if you try to start speaking from the Services menu. Try again with this keystroke technique and you’ll find it works just fine.

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