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 called 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.