Ever miss some urgent alerts while working on your Mac and wish you had a more proactive way of handling important notifications? If your answer is yes, macOS has a well thought out feature called “Voice Announcements” for the exact purpose. With this remarkable macOS accessibility feature, you can have your Mac device speak alert messages to ensure that you never miss urgent alerts while engrossed in work. If this feature sounds useful, let me show you how to enable ad alerts on Mac.
Have Your Mac Say Alert Messages (2021)
Before you start, find out how the Speak Ads feature works on Mac and check compatibility to make sure your Mac is fully integrated. Needless to say, you can use the table of contents below to navigate the post with ease.
How do “Alert Ads” work on Mac?
The Ads for Alerts feature is part of the accessibility package. While this feature is designed for the visually impaired, anyone can take advantage of it to have Siri speak alert messages on Mac. It helps them stay up-to-date on incoming alerts.
In particular, the “Speak Announcements” feature provides full customization. Therefore, you can customize the voice and set a custom phrase before the alert message text. Also, you can set the delay time before the Mac says the alert message. After enabling the Announcements for Alerts feature, your Mac will speak the text in alert dialogs and messages . Furthermore, it can even notify you when an application needs to perform a certain action.
Despite being so useful, this accessibility feature is largely unexplored and disabled by default. In terms of compatibility, it requires modern versions of macOS, including:
So, make sure your macOS device supports this feature. Enough talking, it’s time to get started with quick steps.
Enable and customize Announce Alerts on Mac
- Open the System Preferences application on your Mac. Alternatively, you can click the Apple menu in the upper left corner of the screen and choose System Preferences.
- Now, click on Accessibility.
- Next, click Spoken Contentlocated on the left sidebar.
- Next, check the box to the left of ” Speak Ads“.
- Now, click on the “ Options” button next to “Speak Ads”.
- Next, you have three settings in the “Speak Announcements” feature to customize how to announce alerts on your Mac.
- Voice:Allows you to set whether alerts are spoken by the system voice or by a custom voice. Click on the drop-down menu right next to “Voice” and choose the preferred option. In particular, you have the option of choosing between male and female Siri voices. Also, select a preferred custom voice based on your language.
- Phrase:Allows you to configure the phrase you hear before the text of the alert message. By default, macOS says the name of the application associated with the alert message. However, you can click the drop down menu next to “Phrase” and select a predefined sentence or click ” Edit Phrase List ” and add a custom phrase.
- Delay:Allows you to set how long the Mac should wait before it says the alert message. Use the slider to adjust the delay (up to 60 seconds).
- Once you have customized your talk announcement settings, click the “ Play” button to check how it sounds. In the end, be sure to click ” OK” to confirm.
So yeah, it’s that easy to enable ad alerts on Mac. You can see how speech ads work in action right here!
Disable voice announcements on Mac
You can disable the voice announcements feature on your Mac if you no longer want to use it. Follow the steps below:
- Go to System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Spoken content.
- Now, uncheck the boxto the left of “Speak Ads”.
Enable Speak Announcements to have Siri speak alert messages on Mac
That is all! This is how you can customize the Speak Announcements feature so that your Mac device speaks alert messages. In times when you’re in the middle of serious work, this accessibility feature can come in handy to help you stay up-to-date on the things that matter most to you. While macOS has always been fairly easy to use, the introduction of macOS Monterey has made it very rich. Features like Quick Notes, Safari Tabs, Apple Digital Legacy, Live Text, and the ability to hide the IP address in Safari on macOS Monterey improve the software in many ways.
