In this podcast, we show how you can increase your VoiceOver TTS above the standard 100% on a Mac. This was recorded using OSX Mavericks, but still works great in El Capitan and Yosemite.
If text is more your thing, the same instructions may be found here:
- First, get everything in VO set up the way you want. Then, go into VO utility, and Command-shift-e to export your settings. Export all of them, and save the .voprefs somewhere you’ll remember.
- Open this .voprefs in textEdit by pressing Option-Control-Shift-m, and navigate to Open With > Other… Choose textEdit from the open dialog, and press Return. The .voprefs will open in readable text you can edit.
- Search for rate by pressing Command-f, and typing rate and pressing Return. Hit escape so you’re back in the window and see where you are.
- There’s a line that says “100” below that huge key with “rate” in it. Find the “100,” or whatever your TTS rate is, and change it to something else. You can also do this with volume (some legacy voices like Fred need this to be as loud as the rest of your system).
Note: If you have multiple activities that use different voices and rates, be sure to edit the right one. Do this by searching for the voice name and finding the corresponding rate.
Once that’s completed, Command-s to save, open VO Utility again and import your settings, or just press return on the .voprefs file.
Caution: If you get into trouble with increasing the speech rate too fast, you can press Command -Option-Control-down arrow.
