mac does not change the selected voice when reading aloud

Howdy,

See if your preference file for Spoken Content is corrupted by renaming the preference file then reselect your desired voice and test again.

The file is: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist

You can get there (Preferences) by holding the Option key down while accessing the Go menu in the Finder.

Go to Library and Preferences is in there.

Quit System Preferences (if you haven't already).

Rename "com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist" to "com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist_old".

(It will ask if you are sure.)

Reselect your desired voice(s) again in System Preferences > Accessibility > Spoken Content > System Voice.

(Note if you had other custom voices enabled you will need to Customize… and reselect them again to make them available.)

Then test if your selected voice works again.

Background information:

I found that preference file by viewing the Preferences folder as List sorted by date.

I changed the selected voice and "com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist" popped near the top.

Looking inside with PLIST Editor, I see the apt settings: SelectedVoiceName and SelectedVoiceID

So that is the Preference to test for.

If everything works, you can delete "com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist_old".

ivan

What voices are you trying to use and are you trying text to speech with just Chrome?

When you change a voice with System Preferences > Accessibility > Spoken Content > System Voice

does it change with other apps as well? Try with TextEdit, Safari and Preview (reading a PDF).

Test with other voices as well. I couldn't seem to get Siri Male (United Kingdom) and Siri Female (United States) to work although they played correctly within System Preferences, but Veena (Indian female), Tessa, Susan and some others worked fine.

Also Chrome didn't change the voice until I quit and relaunched it.

If still not working, try completely removing "com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist" to the Desktop, let it rebuild and test again with various voices and apps, quitting the app between voice changes if needed.