Does anyone know how/where I can get a list of which voices the user has enabled, possibly with an AppleScript? Maybe through scripting System Preferences? I found the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist, but that just seems to contain a list of all voices, installed or otherwise.
MacBook Air-OTHER, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), 13 in, Mid 2013, Core i5, 256GB
Look at that file; if a voice was manually enabled, the value below it will be 1 instead of 2.
(127734)
Look at that file; if a voice was manually enabled, the value below it will be 1 instead of 2.
(127734)
Ahhh, that was the key. I must have overlooked that. Thanks, Niel. There are other values, too, like 0 and 4. What do those represent?
Zero appears to indicate that a voice was checked but hasn't been downloaded; not all of the voices are included with the OS.
(127735)
Hmmm... one such voice in my file is com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.kanya.premium_ 0. However, it is neither checked nor installed:
There are other "0's" that aren't checked. The reverse is also true; "Samantha" was manually installed but its value is 4. I noticed it has a checkbox next to it that says "Enhanced quality" - I wonder if that has something to do with it. I just need to know how many of those values indicate the voice is installed (or at least checked).
The following will report voices that are optionally installed by you — instead of those installed by OS X.
ls /var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.MultiLingualVoice*.plist | sed -En 's/.+_([a-z]{2}_[a-zA-Z]{2,}_.+)\..+/\1/p'
en_GB_kate
en_IE_moira
en_US_allison
en_US_samantha
en_US_susan
en_US_tom
en_scotland_fiona
I've been using this for a while and it works OK on Mavericks and older, but I can't get it to work on Yosemite. That file doesn't exist. I found a similar one: /var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.AdditionalSpeechVoices.plist, but that doesn't seem to contain the same information.
Before my Yosemite installation, I had downloaded the additional voices that I applied the command too in Mavericks, and unsurprising, it worked after the Yosemite installation due to legacy plist files presence.
I also noticed now that after my Yosemite installation, I obtained two more voices:
What is not clear is whether MultiLingualVoice is an old naming convention, and SpeechVoice is something new to Yosemite. A slight modification to my original command syntax will get both documents:
ls /var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.{MultiLingualVoice,SpeechVoice}*.plist | sed -En 's/.+_([a-z]{2}_[a-zA-Z]{2,}_.+)\..+/\1/p'Result:
en_GB_kate
en_US_allison
en_US_ava
en_US_tom
en_scotland_fiona
en_US_AlexPremium
Another approach, looking at the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist document is the following syntax:
defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist VisibleIdentifiers | sed -En 's/[ \t]*.+voice\.(.+)"( = 1);/\1\2/p'Results:
allison.premium = 1
fiona.premium = 1
kate.premium = 1
moira.premium = 1
samantha.premium = 1
susan.premium = 1
tom.premium = 1
And using PlistBuddy:
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print VisibleIdentifiers:" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist | awk '$3 == "1" {print substr($0,38,25)}'Result:
allison.premium = 1
susan.premium = 1
fiona.premium = 1
moira.premium = 1
samantha.premium = 1
kate.premium = 1
tom.premium = 1
There is no alex.premium in this plist. Only Alex and it is set to 2. An ava.premium appears in the plist, but is also set to 2.
List of system voices user has enabled?