Say — Text-to-Speech Command in OSX

The text-to-speech function in Mac OSX works in command line too.

A simple say command with a string provided:

$ say "Thank you for calling us. We are currently unavailable to take your call. Please leave us a message and we'll return your call as soon as possible."

We can control the speaking rate in words per minute:

$ say "Thank you for calling us. We are currently unavailable to take your call. Please leave us a message and we'll return your call as soon as possible." -r 180

We can export the speech audio into file:

$ say "Thank you for calling us. We are currently unavailable to take your call. Please leave us a message and we'll return your call as soon as possible." -r 180 -o ~/Desktop/voice-message-en.aiff

We can provide an input file instead of using the string parameter:

$ say -f voice-message.txt

We can specific which voice to use. And specifying “?” lists all the voice options:

$ say -v '?'

For instance, I can have a Cantonese text-to-speech with the voice “Sin-Ji”:

$ say -f voice-message.txt -v "Sin-ji" -r 70