macOS has surprisingly good premium voices you can download for free

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Today I learned that macOS has an incredible hidden gem: premium downloadable voices that are shockingly good quality, and they’re completely free.

Hear It For Yourself

Here’s Evan (Enhanced) with a quick demo:

Where to Find Them

  1. Open System Settings
  2. Go to Accessibility > Spoken Content
  3. Click the info button next to System voice
  4. Browse the available voices and click Download on any you want

That’s it. Apple will download the enhanced voice directly to your Mac.

Why This Matters

I used to throttle my usage of voice features to avoid subscribing to paid services. Now I can use these built-in voices as much as I want. They have natural intonation, proper pacing, and less of that robotic quality you’d expect from system voices. It’s not perfect, but it’s free and reasonably fast on M1+.

The Possibilities

This discovery opens up interesting opportunities:

# List all available voices
say -v '?'

# Use a specific voice
say -v "Samantha (Enhanced)" "Hello, this is a premium voice"

Combining with Scripts

You can use these voices in shell scripts, automation, or as a fallback when cloud TTS services are unavailable:

# Simple notification script
say -v "Samantha (Enhanced)" "Build completed successfully"

Voice Recommendations

Some voices to try:

The enhanced/premium versions are significantly better than the default compact voices. Worth downloading a few to compare.

What I Actually Use

I built Speakeasy to cache calls to API providers like ElevenLabs and OpenAI. I use it to announce Claude hooks and status notifications while I code. It’s still my preferred method, but the built-in voices are a solid free alternative when you don’t need top-tier quality.

Reference

Apple’s official guide: Change Spoken Content settings on Mac

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