Convert Text to Audio easily on OS/X

Tweet

Convert Text to Audio easily on OS/X, a photo by mikeysklar on Flickr.

I am a veracious reader. Well, kinda that's not entirely true. It's more that I can listen to 1 or 2 audiobooks a week plus several podcasts. This is perfect for me because I can work on electronics and do chores around the house while digesting media. The thing that kills me is when people give me hundreds of pages of text to read. I recently discovered that there are multiple ways on osx using default tools to convert text to audio files.

My preferred way to is to run the text through the "say" command. Make sure it is UTF-8 formatted text file.

$ say -o data.m4a -f data.txt

The other option is you can go into

System Preferences --> Keyboard --> Keyboard Shortcuts --> Services --> Text --> Add to iTunes as a spoken track

Now whenever text is selected you have a option to have a audiofile appear in itunes of what is in your clipboard.