3 Ways to Let Siri Do Text to Speech

Updated Jan 11,2019 | by Cody

Siri’s voice is pretty much natural compared to other online text to speech service. If you want Siri to read whatever text, you have come to the right place. In this article, I will show you 3 different methods to allows Siri to do text to speech on iPhone or computer.

Since iOS 5, you can actually use Siri to read everything that appears on your phone to you. You can use it to read Safari web pages, notes, Kindle books, etc. You can set it to read the entire screen or only the text that you highlighted.

To get started, you need to open up the settings app to turn Siri on if you haven’t. After that, follow the steps below to enable this Text to Speech feature on iOS.

Step 1. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Speech.

Step 2. From here, you can enable Speak Screen now. You can also change other settings if needed, which are pretty straightforward.

Here are Speaking Rate, Highlight content, Voice. If you want it to highlight the content as Siri reads it, or you want the speaking speed to be faster or slower, you can go through these settings to customize it.

That’s all the setup. Once you get that done, you can use Siri to read any content on your iOS screen for you. For example, let Siri read a Safari web page. Just open the web page, you can basically just swipe down from the top with two fingers and Siri will begin reading the article now. Then you will see the Speech menu here, you can play/pause or adjust the reading speed here.

If you open the Kindle book or Apple Books, you can use it to read PDF books for you. It’s very easy to customize the reading speed and you can also go to Settings to change the default voice.

You can also do the same on a MacOS computer. On macOS, you can configure a specified key or combination keys to active Siri Speech function. It is recommended to highlight the content before press the configured key. Otherwise, you may find Siri to read ransom text on the screen.

To set it up, Launch System Preferences and navigate to Accessibility > Speech and enable Speak selected text when the key is pressed. You can click Change Key to change the current key to launch this feature.

As you can see, there are other reading configurations that you can customize Including Speaking Rate and System Voice. You can also download other system voice.

Siri Shortcuts is one of the key features in iOS 12. You can use it to automate many things that you may not believe it is possible on iOS. If you create a new shortcut and make use of the Speak action to let Siri speak whatever text you want.

Step 1. Free download the Shortcuts app if you haven’t.

Step 2. Add a Text action and Speak Text action.

Step 3. Then you can input any content into the Text action and run this shortcut to read the text.

You can also add Get Clipboard action to allow Siri to read content from the clipboard. That’s pretty easy. If you want to convert text to MP3, then you can run this pre-made shortcut. If you want to get more out of Shortcuts, you can download these pre-made Siri Shortcuts. 

You can also record the Siri’s voice to use it in a video or somewhere else. Which method do you like the most? I have found some online so-called Siri Voice Generator, but none of them is Siri’s voice. These three ways about using Siri for text to speech are absolutely using Siri’s voice, and of course, you can select another voice in Settings.

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