Add Siri’s Voice to Mac OS X – Siri on Mac OS X Tip

For quite a lot of people, Siri’s voice has become a very familiar and comforting tone. It has become so popular in iOS that Apple decided to get that voice on Mac OS X’s text-to-speech function. So, although Siri on Mac OS X is still a distant dream, we think that you can at least hear the familiar voice through text-to-speech.

If you had manually upgraded to Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard, chances are you missed out on hearing Siri’s voice on the Mac OS X Text-to-speech function.

Here’s how to get Siri’s voice on Mac OS X. The voice is actually siri1called Samantha on Mac.

  • Click on the Apple Menu and launch System Preferences
  • Click on “Speech”
  • Click the “Text-to-speech” tab
  • Now click the pull-down menu that reads “System Voice”
  • From the drop-down, choose “Customize”
  • Did you find “Samantha” there? Click on it.
  • Now, click “OK” – the voice will get downloaded.
  • On the next screen, click Install.
  • After the installation, all you’ve got to do is change the System Voice to Samantha and test it out.
  • That’s it. Siri’s voice is on your Mac OS X now.

Please note that the voice files are quite large at about 400-500 MB. If you’re looking to save space, you can head to:
/System/Library/Speech/Voices/

and delete voices that you are sure you won’t be using. The folder will have a “.SpeechVoice” extension on it.

For instance, if you wish to delete Samantha’s voice files, you’ll have to delete Samantha. SpeechVoice.