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Is it possible to change the voice that Mac OS X uses for the say command? How?

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4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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By default it uses the System Voice set in the Text to Speech page of the Speech panel of System Preferences. Otherwise, you can use the -v option with one of the named voices:

say -v Zarvox "found it in the man page"
say -v Agnes "found it in the man page"
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    To get a list of the named voices type say -v ?.
    – Gregory Arenius
    Commented Nov 6, 2016 at 22:46
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    say -v not working
    – Jas
    Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 6:36
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    With zsh (which is the default OS X shell), you need to escape the question mark: say -v \?. Or you can run it within single quotes: say -v '?'
    – carbocation
    Commented Sep 5, 2022 at 6:15
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man say yields this

  -v voice, --voice=voice
       Specify the voice to be used. Default is the voice selected in
       System Preferences.
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You can permanently change the voice by changing the System Voice in System Preferences -> Dictation & Speech -> Text to Speech

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  • In macOS Ventura, it’s found in Accessibility → Spoken Content.
    – Tom Söderlund
    Commented Feb 2, 2023 at 21:04
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You can view/customize different voices on Mac from

System Preferences --> Accessibility --> Speech

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