Read a single word with just one click or no click?

By Andy, 30 March, 2024

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

I want to read out a single word, but double clicking to highlight, right click, speech, starting speaking is too slow.

I made a couple of applescripts to help: One that reads out the clipboard in a loop, and another that tried to copy word next to, or under the cursor to the clipboard.

However, the script to copy the word to the clipboard doesn't work.

Is there another way? I only need this in text fields.

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Comments

By Stoo on Tuesday, March 26, 2024 - 22:35

Are you using the rota for the shortcut to get to read by word, line and carachter?

If I'm working through text I have quick nav turned on, so I just press the left or right arrow key plus up arrow key to move between those options.
Navigation then changes to whatever you've chosen, so it's fairly swift to swap between general navigation and reading by word.

The same can be done by the finger rotation gesture on the trackpad, then swiping to move by word etcetera.

By Brad on Tuesday, March 26, 2024 - 22:35

You could try turning it on and pressing, on windows it would be, control left or right arrow, that should read word by word.

I have heard it can be a bit fidly though and haven't used a mac in years but it should work for what you need.

By Bruce Harrell on Tuesday, March 26, 2024 - 22:35

Focus on the word. Press Vo-W once to hear the word. Press it twice to hear it spelled. Press it a third time to hear it spelled phonetically.

By Andy on Tuesday, April 2, 2024 - 22:35

Option + left and right works, but it's a bit too easy to mash the buttons rather than practice with the mouse.

What is the vo-w shortcut? I am not familiar with this combination.

I have all verbosity set to low, but unfortunately I can't set any of that to zero.

Under speech, voices, edit, I set all volumes (content, status etc) to 1 except for "default", which I set to 80. This helped, but there are still a lot of other things being read out like "New line", which I don't want to hear.

The main thing that's working well is: "When moving the cursor: Speak text that the cursor passes". That's all I want it to do; just read the text only.

By Bruce Harrell on Tuesday, April 2, 2024 - 22:35

Hi. Vo-w is the vo read word command. For just reading along in text, I either use vo-a (cintinuous read) or arrow down or vo-down arrow, depending on the circumstances.

Hope this helps.