Reads to you.Listens to you.

Aloud is a small Mac menu bar app. Select any text and it reads it to you in a natural voice. Tap a key and talk, and it types what you say into any app. Both run on your Mac, so nothing you read or say goes online.

Download for Mac

Free for 7 days, then $9.99 once · Apple silicon · macOS 14 or later

Safari

Tue 9:41 AM

essays.example.com

The Quiet Economics of Listening

8 min read

For most of history, reading was something you did with your eyes. You sat still, held a page, and moved through it line by line. Audio changed that, but only for the things someone had already chosen to record.

Now anything you can select can be heard: a long email on a walk, a report while you cook, a paper with your eyes closed.

Running late

To: Sam Okafor

Subject: Running late

Aloud“For most of history, reading was something you did with your eyes.”

One key. That's it.

The right Option key does the work. Hold it to hear what you've selected. Tap it once to start talking, and again when you're done. It works in every app.

Read aloud hold right ⌥

Select text in any app, then hold the right Option key for a moment. Reading starts right away and keeps going when you let go: pause with Space, the player or your AirPods.

Dictate right ⌥

Tap the right Option key, talk, then tap it again to finish. ⌘esc throws a recording away.

Reads to you

Hear anything you can select.

Articles, email threads, PDFs, long Slack messages. The first words arrive in about half a second, and it keeps reading in the background while you do something else.

Aloud's player: the text being read with the current sentence highlighted, a timeline, and playback controls

14 voicesAmerican and British, far closer to a person than the built-in Mac voices
Up to 2.5× speedFaster listening without the chipmunk effect
Scrub like a podcastDrag the timeline, skip 15 seconds, or click any sentence to jump to it
AirPodsPress once to pause, twice to skip ahead a sentence

Listens to you

Talk instead of typing.

Click into any text field and tap the right Option key. Talk for ten seconds or ten minutes. Tap it again and your words appear, punctuated, about a second later.

To: Sam Okafor

Hi Sam, I'm running about ten minutes late. Could you grab us a table by the window? Thanks!

Tap, talk, tapOne tap to start, another to finish. Or hold the key and let go when you're done
About 1 secondIt transcribes while you talk, so even long dictation is ready right after you stop
Hard to loseOnly ⌘esc cancels, so a stray Esc can't throw away ten minutes of talking
Any appMail, Slack, Notes, Messages, your browser, your code editor

Nothing you read or say leaves your Mac.

Both models are stored on your Mac and run on its own chip. There's no account and no subscription, and it keeps working with Wi-Fi off.

No usage limit
No account
Works offline

Set up in a minute.

The app is a small download. The voice and dictation models follow quietly in the background the first time it opens.

Download and open the disk imageDownload it here, then drag Aloud into your Applications folder.
Open Aloud from ApplicationsmacOS asks once whether to open an app from the internet; click Open. The bars appear in your menu bar, with a short welcome underneath. The voice (about 355 MB) downloads in the background, usually within a minute or two, then reading is ready.
Allow Accessibility accessClick Open Accessibility Settings and switch Aloud on. This lets it see the text you select and type what you dictate. It doesn't record your screen or keystrokes.
Allow the microphone the first time you dictateThe 460 MB dictation model starts downloading shortly after first launch, so it's usually ready by then.

Pay once. Keep it.

Everything runs on your Mac, so there's nothing to charge you for every month. Try all of Aloud free for a week, then buy it once.

~~$19~~ $9.99

Launch price · one-time purchase · all your Macs · plus local tax

Try It Free for 7 Days Buy Now

Same price in US and Canadian dollars; local prices elsewhere. Bought it already? Find your license.

Questions.

The short answers.

How much does it cost?

Aloud is free for 7 days, with everything included. After that it's a one-time purchase: $9.99 while it's new (it'll be $19 later), plus local tax. There's no subscription and no usage limit, because the voice and transcription run on your own Mac, not on a server we pay for.

Can I use it on more than one Mac?

Yes, on all your own Macs. Open the license email on the other Mac and click Unlock Aloud, or paste the license in Settings → License. Lost the email? Get it sent again.

I used Aloud while it was free. Do I have to pay?

No. If you installed Aloud before it went paid, it stays free for you, with every update.

Is anything I select or say sent to the internet?

No. Text is turned into speech, and speech into text, on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded, and both work with Wi-Fi switched off once the voice and dictation models have downloaded.

Which Macs does it run on?

Macs with Apple silicon (M1 or newer) running macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Intel Macs aren't supported because the voice would be too slow.

Does it know tech words?

Yes. It knows about 10,000 tech, design, engineering and business terms and says them the way people do, from nginx to Kubernetes. Dictation spells them right too: say “super base” and you get Supabase. If you'd rather dictation typed exactly what it heard, turn off Fix tech terms in dictation in Settings.

Which languages can it read?

English, in American and British voices. If a selection is all in another script, like Chinese, Japanese or Arabic, Aloud shows a message saying it reads English. In mixed text, the sentences in other scripts are skipped and the rest is read aloud. Other languages written in the Latin alphabet are read as if they were English. Dictation works in English only.

Can I choose which microphone and speakers it uses?

Yes. In Settings, drag your speakers and microphones into the order you prefer, and Aloud uses the highest one that's connected, even if your Mac is set to something else. Handy with a display or headset that has its own mic and speakers. Until you set an order, it follows your Mac's Sound settings.

Can I keep using another dictation app?

Yes, but give them different keys. By default Aloud uses the right ⌥ (Option) key: tap it to dictate, hold it to read. If your other app uses that key too, pick a different key for Aloud in Settings (right-click the menu bar icon → Settings…).

Why does it need Accessibility and microphone access?

macOS only lets apps read another app's selected text, notice the dictation key, and type into other apps through Accessibility. The microphone is used only while you're dictating.

Can I change the shortcuts?

Yes. Right-click the menu bar icon and choose Settings…. There are four: Read selection, Start dictation, Finish dictation and Cancel dictation. Click one, then press a key combination, tap a modifier key, or double-tap any modifier key on either side: ⌥, ⌘, ⌃, ⇧ or fn. Read selection can also be a hold. Finish follows Start until you set it yourself, and Cancel takes a key combination, so a stray tap can't throw a recording away. Restore Defaults puts them back.

How do I uninstall it?

Right-click the menu bar icon, choose Quit, then drag Aloud from Applications to the Trash. To remove the downloaded voice and dictation models too, delete the ReadAloud folder in ~/Library/Application Support. To free up space but keep the app, remove either model in Settings; Aloud asks before downloading it again.

How do I get updates?

Aloud checks once a day and lets you know with a notification when a new version is out; you can also choose Check for Updates… from the menu bar icon. If you have version 1.3 or earlier, download the latest once from this page.

Give your eyes
and hands a break.