Selected text
Highlight words in any app and press ⌃⌥S. Aloud reads them through Accessibility, or copies and puts your clipboard back. The Read with Aloud service in the right-click menu needs no permission at all.
Your Mac reads any text, PDF or screenshot aloud.
Select text in any app, open a PDF or drag over a screenshot, and Aloud reads it out loud with each word highlighted.
$19 once, yours forever. License key emailed after checkout. Includes optional Kokoro neural voices on Apple silicon with macOS 15 or later: download 327 MB once, then listen offline.
Aloud at aloudapp.app is a native Mac app, $19 one-time, no subscription. It is not affiliated with aloudformac.com or aloud.work.
- Native Mac app
- On-device voices work offline
- No account
- macOS 14 or later
Six in the morning
⌃⌥S
Selection · Notes
1.25×
Three ways in
If you can see it, Aloud can read it.
PDFs, without the clutter
Running headers, footers and page numbers are left out. Hyphenated line breaks are rejoined and paragraphs that cross a page read as one. Scanned pages are recognised on your Mac.
Screenshots and images
Press ⌃⌥O, drag a box around a slide, a locked viewer or a photo of a sign, and hear what it says. Text recognition runs on the Mac.
Made to stay out of the way
A quiet menu bar app with one small reader.
No Dock icon, no window to manage. The reader floats above your work without taking focus, so the app you’re reading from keeps its selection.
Reading
The sentence, the page, and what gets left out.
Follows along
One sentence at a time, with the current word in a soft, rounded highlight.
Hide it, keep listening
Close the reader and playback carries on.
Themes and focus mode
Paper, Sepia, Night or High Contrast pages. Focus mode clears away everything but the page and dims all but the paragraph being read.
Leaves out the noise
Web addresses are read as the site’s name, and citations like [12] and footnote marks are skipped. The page still shows everything.
Go to Page
Jump straight to any page of a PDF. Ticks on the progress bar mark where each page starts.
Picks up where you left off
Reopen a recent reading from the menu bar and carry on from the sentence where you stopped.
Save as audio
Export any reading as an .m4a file in your chosen voice, with the same skips and pronunciations, to play anywhere.
Voices
On your Mac, or a cloud voice you bring.
Your Mac’s voices
Uses the voices installed on your Mac, including Enhanced and Premium ones you download.
Kokoro, on your Mac
A natural-sounding neural voice that runs on the Mac itself, word highlight and all. A one-time 327 MB download, on Macs with Apple silicon and macOS 15 or later.
Bring your own voice
Have an ElevenLabs or Cartesia account? Add your API key and read with their voices, word highlight and all. The key stays in your Mac’s Keychain and the service bills you directly.
Your pronunciations
Tell Aloud once how to say a name or a bit of jargon, and it says it that way wherever it appears.
Everywhere on your Mac
From a shortcut, a Service, or the front tab.
Shortcuts you choose
Read the selection, a screenshot, the browser’s article or the paragraph under the pointer; pause, stop, skip or change speed. Rebind or turn off any of them; clashes are explained, not silent.
Web articles
Read the article on the front tab of Safari or Chrome, without the menus, ads and captions. The browser hands over the page it already has; nothing is downloaded again.
Read with Aloud
Select text in any app, or a file in Finder, and choose Read with Aloud or Read File with Aloud from the Services menu.
Shortcuts and Siri
Read selected text, the clipboard, a file or the browser’s article, pause, stop or change speed from the Shortcuts app, or ask Siri.
Play and pause anywhere
Add a play-pause control to Control Center or the menu bar on macOS 26.
Control
Speed, sleep, and a plain answer.
0.75× to 2×
Change speed any time, mid-sentence.
Sleep timer
Stop at the end of the paragraph, or after 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes.
Honest when it can’t
Nothing selected, or no text in the image? You get a plain message, not silence.
Automatic updates
Checks for updates once a day and asks before installing one.
Privacy
What you read stays on your Mac unless you pick a cloud voice.
Apple voices, the Kokoro voice and text recognition run on your Mac. There is no account and no telemetry in the app. Aloud goes online only to activate a license, check for updates, and download the Kokoro voice if you choose it. Text is sent to ElevenLabs or Cartesia only when you choose to read with their voices, using your own key.
- Reading with Apple or Kokoro voices never touches the network
- Apple and Kokoro voices work the same on a plane
- No account, no sign-in
- No analytics or telemetry in the app
This website, aloudapp.app, uses Vercel Web Analytics: cookieless, aggregate page views only. The app itself has no analytics.
Permissions, plainly
Accessibility
Lets Aloud read the text you’ve selected in other apps. Optional: the right-click service works without it.
Screen Recording
Only for the screenshot shortcut, so Aloud can capture the area you choose.
Automation
Only for reading a web article, so Aloud can ask Safari or Chrome for the page on its front tab.
Pricing
Pay once. That’s the whole model.
$19 once, not $29/mo or $139/yr.
Speechify Premium is $29/mo or $139/yr. Aloud is one payment for your Mac. Aloud vs Speechify.
$19
one time, per Mac
- $19 once, yours forever. No subscription, no account.
- No subscription. You aren’t renting your ears. One price, one key.
- Selection, PDFs and screenshots. All three ways to read are in the one price.
- License key by email. Paste it into Aloud once and it's activated on that Mac.
Secure checkout through Lemon Squeezy. License key emailed after checkout.
Questions
Straight answers.
Can I buy it today?
Yes. Buy opens checkout. After you pay, your license key is emailed.
macOS already has Speak Selection. Why Aloud?
Speak Selection is good for a quick read. Aloud adds PDFs that skip headers and footers, reading from screenshots and images, and a floating reader with word-by-word highlighting. On Apple silicon Macs running macOS 15 or later, your $19 purchase also includes Kokoro: eight English neural voices, with a one-time 327 MB download. Kokoro runs offline on your Mac, with no API key or voice subscription.
What voices does it use?
The voices installed on your Mac, including the Enhanced and Premium ones you can download in System Settings. They’re all on-device. If you have an ElevenLabs or Cartesia account, you can add your own API key in Settings and read with their voices too; they bill you for what you use. On a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 15 or later, you can also download Kokoro, a natural-sounding voice that runs on your Mac (327 MB, once).
Does it ever go online?
Reading with Apple or Kokoro voices never uses the network. Aloud goes online only to activate a license, check for updates, and download the Kokoro voice if you choose it. Text is sent to ElevenLabs or Cartesia only when you choose to read with their voices.
Does it read scanned PDFs and photos of text?
Yes. Pages with almost no embedded text, and any image you capture or open, are recognised on your Mac. Multi-column layouts can read out of order, because the order follows how the text is found.
What do I need?
A Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Accessibility permission for reading selections in other apps, and Screen Recording permission for the screenshot shortcut. The Kokoro voice needs a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 15 or later; other Macs read with Apple voices.
Is there a subscription?
No. It’s $19 once, per Mac.
