Home » Mac, Reviews, how to

How To: Get OS X Mavericks Voices

14 November 2013 3,445 views No Comment

os-x-mavericks-voice-customize

OS X Mavericks has lots of cool new features, among my favorites are the new text-to-speech voices. Yes, Siri (aka Samantha) is still in there, but so are some new and even better ones — here is how to get ’em.

The Fairer Platform first brought you news of the new voices in Mavericks back in July, when OS X 10.9 was still in beta. These new voices, however, they aren’t installed by default — you need to download them:

1.) Go to System Preferences > Speech & Dictation > Text to Speech. Click the System Voice drop down and click “Customize” (shown above).

2.) Therein, you see the voices installed by default and a long list of (mostly foreign) accented voices available for download. To preview a voice, select it and then click the play button (below). I suggest getting Samantha (aka Siri), as well as Ava and Allison, which are new in Mavericks — hear Ava and Samantha read an excerpt from Moby Dick.

os-x-mavericks-voice-choices

3.) Click OK and your new voices will download. Whereas all of these voices are free, some are quite large and can take awhile to download.

os-x-maverick-voice-download

Still not enough voices? CereProc sells a variety of US and foreign accent voices for £25.99 each.

Related Posts:
OS X Mavericks Adoption Stalls as Users Await Updates
OS X Mavericks on an Original Mac Pro
OS X Mavericks SMB2 Troubles? Here’s a Workaround
Mavericks Wallpapers: Apple Has an Easter Egg for You
OS X Mavericks Screensavers: More than 10 Plus Over 200 More

Leave your response!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.