Siri Speech Synthesis on MacOS - Documentation and Demo

Creates an audio file of text - either from the clipboard, or from the services menu - bypassing the broken Safari Reader action on MacOS.

At the moment, the Safari Reader action upon which my iOS-borned Siri Speech Synthesis Shortcut depends is not functioning on MacOS, so I’ve created this (hopefully temporary) solution that performs 11the same function, though it will require you to select and/or copy the body of an article to the clipboard yourself.

SiriSpeechSynthMacOSSource
SiriSpeechSynthMacOSSource

Social

Reddit

My closest equivalent Shortcut for MacOS.

Hey folks! I know it’s certainly been a while. Sorry it’s taken me so long to explore the viability of this shortcut on the Mac, but frankly, it turns out we weren’t missing much. Please be warned: the result of this process on MacOS sounds like garbage. That is, like any old Speech Synth service you might get your hands on.

(Here’s a rough, one-take video demo.)

Personally, this nullifies the entire point, but maybe you’ll have better luck. I’ll do a better job keeping up from now on. Please contact me if I can be of any help, yeah?

Timelines

I’d love to tell you I’ve been intentionally waiting to release a MacOS equivalent to my Siri Speech Synthesis shortcut until the Safari Reader action was fixed, but I wasn’t able to actually try it until a few days ago… but…

anywho. I HAVE published the closest equivalent I could manifest, which will involve you doing the work of the absentee Reader (selecting the body text you’d like read aloud,) though it seems pretty discriminating so far. https://routinehub.co/shortcut/10583

unfortunately the result uh… sucks. I’m sure I could investigate and find out why it sounds like Simone Siri is missing a few billion dollars worth of research on MacOS compared to iOS, but it doesn’t seem like you care, so… https://bilge.world/software-thanksgiving

(here’s the raw file just in case.) https://github.com/extratone/bilge/raw/main/audio/TTS/SoftwareThanksgiving.m4a

Video Demo Meta

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mYdO5B3CKDU?controls=0" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Creates an audio file of text - either from the clipboard, or from the services menu - bypassing the broken Safari Reader action on MacOS.

The writeup of the original iOS-native Siri Shortcut on my blog: https://bilge.world/siri-tts

 • 𝚁𝚘𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚎𝙷𝚞𝚋 𝙿𝚊𝚐𝚎 (Download/Install Here:) https://routinehub.co/shortcut/10583/
 • iCloud Share Link: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/7789070881204567a335f864a35f0115
• GitHub Issue: https://github.com/extratone/i/issues/115

At the moment, the Safari Reader action upon which my iOS-borned Siri Speech Synthesis Shortcut depends is not functioning on MacOS, so I’ve created this (hopefully temporary) solution that performs 11the same function, though it will require you to select and/or copy the body of an article to the clipboard yourself.