I’m curious to know if there is a way to change the voice on the Speech function for Scrivener for Mac. Scrivener doesn’t use the voice I’ve chosen in my MacOS accessibility preferences—a Siri voice—and instead defaults to the robotic sounding basic voice.
The work around is using Opt+Esc to read, which uses the Siri voice, but I’d also like to be able to click the mic icon on the toolbar to access for the same voice. This is especially important to me because I use the speech function regularly.
I can’t help more (or much) being a Windows user but, question :
Did you play with the setting for the speed, for example, to see if at least you’ve got some degree of control over the function ?
(What I mean is that if you can’t even control the speed, then the voice and all other settings are somewhere else. Why or where, don’t ask me. But that’d be the logical conclusion.)
I appreciate the help. I can control the speed via Mac preferences. It just doesn’t use the voice I’ve chosen there. Defaults to robot voice. I’ve got a support ticket in with Literature and Latte.
I feel for you, Robert. I have the same problem. I can’t believe this question has been here since last October and there’s no answer. Someone must know either how to do it or that it can’t be done. The only answer is an effort from a Windows Scriv user?
I can get Samantha. Why can’t I get Nicky? I’ve got “Nicky” checked in the Accessibility/Spoken Content window on Monterey. I checked “Allison” and there was a download. Now I can get Allison. But there doesn’t seem to be a download for Nicky, a voice that’s seemingly on the computer already.
In RobertGB’s case, he opened a help ticket with us, which I happened to pick up.
In our troubleshooting, we found that macOS Monterey wouldn’t allow him to use the voice he preferred. He upgraded to macOS Ventura, which resolved his issue.
Since Scrivener uses the macOS tools for the text-to-speech functions, I’d suggest testing with a second Scrivener project like the Interactive Tutorial.
If the issue continues in the Tutorial, please make sure you’ve installed Apple’s latest patches to your macOS. The most recent Monterey update takes it to 12.7.2.
Yes, as RuthS says, the upgrade to MacOS Ventura makes it work. Don’t know what the problem is with Monterey, but since upgrading to Ventura the problem is gone.
Unfortunately we do not have any information on what might fix it, but it probably is related to system configuration to some degree given the problem went away in an upgrade for someone else. I don’t think there is anything Scrivener is doing specifically, or rather that there is anything one can do from that side since it is wholly dependent on how the OS works with text to speech.
You’d honestly probably have more luck searching in a broader way for macOS using the wrong voice. For example, this thread, although old, refers to issues with the wrong voice being used.
