New in Toolbox 1.1
Text to speech on your Mac
Text to Speech reads out anything you type, paste or drop, highlighting each word as it goes, and saves the reading as an audio file. It uses the voices installed on your Mac, including the more natural Enhanced and Premium voices and your own Personal Voice if you've set one up. It detects the language of the text and picks a matching voice, and scanned PDFs are read once their text has been recognized on device.


How to use Text to Speech
Open Text to Speech and type or paste text, or drop a text, Markdown, RTF, Word or PDF file.
Check the Language and Voice. Toolbox suggests the most natural installed voice for the language it detects.
Set the Speed and Pitch and, if you like, turn on Pause between paragraphs. Click Play, or select some text and click Play Selection.
Choose M4A, WAV or MP3 and click Save Audio. The file goes to a new dated folder in Downloads.
Questions about Text to Speech
How do I make my Mac read a PDF out loud?
Drop the PDF into Text to Speech and click Play. Toolbox joins the lines that break at the page edge so sentences read smoothly, and it recognizes the text of scanned pages on your Mac first.
How do I get more natural voices?
Download Enhanced or Premium voices in System Settings › Accessibility › Spoken Content › System Voice › Manage Voices. They show up in the Voice menu in Toolbox when you come back.
Can I save text to speech as an MP3?
Yes. M4A and WAV work out of the box. MP3 is encoded with FFmpeg, which Toolbox can install for you from Settings.
Is it free, and is my text uploaded?
Toolbox is a paid app, and one purchase includes every tool, with no subscription or account. Speech is made with Apple's voices on your Mac, so your text and documents never leave it.
Related tools
- TranscribeTurn speech in audio and video into a timestamped transcript.
- TranslateTranslate text, documents and subtitles on device, keeping their formatting and timings.
- Ask a DocumentNew in 1.1Ask questions about a PDF or document and get answers with page references, on device.
- Convert AudioChange audio files to MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC or AIFF.