A normal part of my workflow is on occassion to highlight a portion of text in an article or whatever and using the [Option + Esc] buttons my Mac will read that text to me using Text to Speech.
Now for some reason I have noticed that lately (in the last couple of days, this has begun to randomly stop reading the text and end the application prematurely
I have no explanation for this but it is highly irritating and messing with my flow.
It appears that if I attempt to do anything else on screen it is stopping the sound. I was for example able to have the screen read this whole message all the way through. But, the moment I touched the magic trackpad to do anything else whilst it was reading, it stopped.
It never used to stop.
I say someone one youtube suggesting that I delete various sound files and then restart the Mac. I tried this and it has not worked.
Naturally I have had several full restarts and this has not had any affect either.
I am wondering if this awesome community has any advice?
I have a new Mac Mini M2 which I migrated details from my older MacBook Pro 2015. Not sure if that has any bearing but I thought that I would mention it anyway.
I wonder if itās something that happened with the latest update that I maybe didnāt pay attention to. Either way, itās comforting to know that I am not going mad and itās not just happening to me.
How long has it been happening to you? Iām wondering if itās a recent thing or if itās been going on for quite some time.
For me itās only been happening recently. I certainly donāt remember this being a problem before. Itās a significant part of my workflow, so itās very irritating.
Yep, I heavily rely on it too, but itās been acting up for the past couple of weeks. Itās driving me nuts, and Iām on the hunt for a fix because I really donāt want to resort to using some third-party software.
I am running the latest beta of Sonoma (Version 14.4 Beta) on my Mac mini M2 and I am not experiencing this problem. I am running the previous beta of Sonoma (Version 14.3 Beta) on my MacBookAir M2 and itās working fine there. I donāt have any answers for you but I thought this info might help. Good luck.
I have found that so far the one way around it is to highlight the text I am trying to hear and then use the Right click of the mouse method, followed by āSpeechā; āStart Speakingā.
So far I have found that I can get on with other things WITHOUT it stopping working.
The method where I use Option; Escape is still messing about.
I also have āPopClipā installed and have added the āSAYā action, meaning that all I need do is highlight text and then āSayā; becomes an option. I am frustrated by the speed of the speech and want to increase that, but thatās a problem for another dayā¦ so if anyone can help with that Iād welcome it.
Iāve also found your resolution of using the āStart Speakingā option by right clicking. Additionally, Iām playing with creating an applescript to read the content of the clipboard: say (the clipboard)
That said, I think the pattern Iāve seen (mostly) is if your focus changes from the cursors standpoint. If you donāt move at all, it stops speaking less I think.
