How to Use Talking Alerts on a Mac

Maybe you should listen to what your Mac tells you. Talking Alerts can grab your attention when you're not looking. Talking Alerts work on most Macs using System 7.6 and later.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Mac OS 9.0

1. Click on the Apple menu and select Control Panels, then Speech.

2. Click the "Speak the alert text" checkbox in the Talking Alerts section.

3. Slide the timing arrow (wait before speaking) to the delay you want between the appearance of the alert and when the voice reads the alert text.

4. Set your Mac to speak a phrase before speaking the alert text by clicking the "Speak the phrase" checkbox. You can choose to have your Mac speak specific phrase from the list, phrases from the list in order, or a phrase at random.

Tips & Warnings

• You can choose to have only the phrase spoken, and not the alert text, by unchecking the "Speak the alert text" checkbox.

• The Speech control panel has a number of voices you can select. Click on the Options menu and select Voices. Choose a voice from the Voices menu below that.

• The "high quality" voices demand more of your RAM than the others, but Victoria is worth it!