Mac OS X voices for using with the ‘say’ command


A neat trick if you have a Mac OS X machine is to do this (make sure your speakers are turned on):

  1. Open Terminal.app
  2. Type in at the command line: say hello world

This will make your computer say “hello world” in the default voice (Victoria).

Here is a list of the other voices you can also use:

Female Voices

  • $ say -v Agnes "hello world"
  • $ say -v Kathy "hello world"
  • $ say -v Princess "hello world"
  • $ say -v Vicki "hello world"
  • $ say -v Victoria "hello world"

Male Voices

  • $ say -v Bruce "hello world"
  • $ say -v Fred "hello world"
  • $ say -v Junior "hello world"
  • $ say -v Ralph "hello world"

Novelty Voices

  • $ say -v Albert "hello world"
  • $ say -v "Bad News" "hello world"
  • $ say -v Bahh "hello world"
  • $ say -v Bells "hello world"
  • $ say -v Boing "hello world"
  • $ say -v Bubbles "hello world"
  • $ say -v Cellos "hello world"
  • $ say -v Deranged "hello world"
  • $ say -v "Good News" "hello world"
  • $ say -v Hysterical "hello world"
  • $ say -v "Pipe Organ" "hello world"
  • $ say -v Trinoids "hello world"
  • $ say -v Whisper "hello world"
  • $ say -v Zarvox "hello world"

Have fun. You can now add voices to your monitoring applications, or freak people out if they don’t know about this cool trick.

To learn about all of the functionality of the say program, type in man say in Terminal to learn more, or click here to view the online man page for say.

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10 responses to “Mac OS X voices for using with the ‘say’ command”

  1. Gabriel, thanks so much for your list!

    Figured I’d post this little regex’d version, paste the following into terminal for a cast of characters:

    say -v Agnes “Hi, my name is Agnes”
    say -v Kathy “Hi, my name is Kathy”
    say -v Princess “Hi, my name is Princess”
    say -v Vicki “Hi, my name is Vicki”
    say -v Victoria “Hi, my name is Victoria”
    say -v Bruce “Hi, my name is Bruce”
    say -v Fred “Hi, my name is Fred”
    say -v Junior “Hi, my name is Junior”
    say -v Ralph “Hi, my name is Ralph”
    say -v Albert “Hi, my name is Albert”
    say -v “Bad News” “Hi, my name is Bad News”
    say -v Bahh “Hi, my name is Bahh”
    say -v Bells “Hi, my name is Bells”
    say -v Boing “Hi, my name is Boing”
    say -v Bubbles “Hi, my name is Bubbles”
    say -v Cellos “Hi, my name is Cellos”
    say -v Deranged “Hi, my name is Deranged”
    say -v “Good News” “Hi, my name is Good News”
    say -v Hysterical “Hi, my name is Hysterical”
    say -v “Pipe Organ” “Hi, my name is Pipe Organ”
    say -v Trinoids “Hi, my name is Trinoids”
    say -v Whisper “Hi, my name is Whisper”
    say -v Zarvox “Hi, my name is Zarvox”

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