Selected text
Highlight words in any app and press ⌃⌥S. Aloud reads them through Accessibility, or copies and puts your clipboard back. The Read with Aloud service in the right-click menu needs no permission at all.
Select anything.
Hear it.
Aloud reads selected text, PDFs and screenshots out loud, right on your Mac. No account, and nothing is sent to a server.
One-time $19. 3-day trial in the app. License key emailed after checkout.
- $19 once
- 3-day free trial
- No subscription
- macOS 14 or later
Six in the morning
⌃⌥S
Selection · Notes
1.25×
Three ways in
If you can see it, Aloud can read it.
PDFs, without the clutter
Running headers, footers and page numbers are left out. Hyphenated line breaks are rejoined and paragraphs that cross a page read as one. Scanned pages are recognised on your Mac.
Screenshots and images
Press ⌃⌥O, drag a box around a slide, a locked viewer or a photo of a sign, and hear what it says. Text recognition runs on the Mac.
Made to stay out of the way
A quiet menu bar app with one small reader.
No Dock icon, no window to manage. The reader floats above your work without taking focus, so the app you’re reading from keeps its selection.
- Follows alongOne sentence at a time, with the current word softly lit.
- Hide it, keep listeningClose the reader and playback carries on.
- 0.75× to 2×Change speed any time, mid-sentence.
- Your Mac’s voicesUses the voices installed on your Mac, including Enhanced and Premium ones you download.
- Three shortcutsRead selection, read screenshot, pause. Rebind them; clashes are explained, not silent.
- Honest when it can’tNothing selected, or no text in the image? You get a plain message, not silence.
Privacy
What you read stays on your Mac.
Speech and text recognition use your Mac’s own engines. There is no account, no telemetry and no cloud voice to send anything to.
- Reading never touches the network
- Works the same on a plane
- No account, no sign-in
- No analytics or telemetry
Permissions, plainly
- Accessibility
- Lets Aloud read the text you’ve selected in other apps. Optional: the right-click service works without it.
- Screen Recording
- Only for the screenshot shortcut, so Aloud can capture the area you choose.
Pricing
Pay once. That’s the whole model.
$19
one time, per Mac
Buy Aloud · $19Secure checkout through Lemon Squeezy. License key emailed after checkout.
- 3 days, everything unlocked. The trial starts when you first open the app. No card, no account.
- No subscription. You aren’t renting your ears. One price, one key.
- Selection, PDFs and screenshots. All three ways to read are in the one price.
- After the trial, Aloud asks for a license key before it reads again.
Questions
Straight answers.
Can I buy it today?
Yes. Buy opens checkout. After you pay, your license key is emailed. The app includes a 3-day trial from the first time you open it.
macOS already has Speak Selection. Why Aloud?
Speak Selection is good for a quick read and Aloud doesn’t replace it. Aloud adds what it lacks: PDFs that skip headers and footers, reading from screenshots and images, and a small reader that shows the sentence and word being spoken.
What voices does it use?
The voices installed on your Mac, including the Enhanced and Premium ones you can download in System Settings. They’re all on-device. Aloud doesn’t bundle a voice of its own.
Does it ever go online?
Reading text, PDFs and screenshots never uses the network. The one thing that will is entering a license key to activate a purchase.
Does it read scanned PDFs and photos of text?
Yes. Pages with almost no embedded text, and any image you capture or open, are recognised on your Mac. Multi-column layouts can read out of order, because the order follows how the text is found.
What do I need?
A Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Accessibility permission for reading selections in other apps, and Screen Recording permission for the screenshot shortcut.
Is there a subscription?
No. It’s $19 once, per Mac.