ARCHIVED: In Mac OS X, what are the Talking Alerts and speech recognition features, and how do I turn them on or off?

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Talking Alerts

Talking Alerts, first introduced in Mac OS 8.5 and included in Mac OS X version 10.2.x and later, is a feature that causes your computer to read the text of dialog boxes after a set period of time. To enable or disable it, follow these steps:

From the Apple menu, select System Preferences....
In System Preferences, from the View menu, select Speech.
From the Spoken User Interface tab, choose from the following options:
- To have Talking Alerts speak a warning phrase before reading the text of dialog boxes, select the Speak the phrase: checkbox. From the pull-down menu, you can choose what this phrase will be and add your own phrases. If you want Talking Alerts to speak only the warning phrase and not the text of dialog boxes, select this checkbox only.
- To have Talking Alerts read the text of dialog boxes, select the Speak the alert text checkbox. If you don't want Talking Alerts to speak a warning phrase, select only this checkbox.
- From the pull-down list next to "Talking Alerts voice:", select the voice you would like the computer to use when speaking alerts.
- To control how long Talking Alerts waits before speaking, use the "Wait before speaking:" slider bar.
- To test your settings, click the Demonstrate Settings button.
- To disable Talking Alerts completely, deselect both of the checkboxes.

Speech recognition

Apple Speakable Items is Apple's speech recognition software built into OS X. To turn it on or off, and to adjust the settings, follow the directions below:

From the Apple menu, select System Preferences....
In System Preferences, from the View menu, select Speech.
Under the Speech Recognition tab, you can select from several options:
- Under the On/Off tab, you can turn Apple Speakable Items on and off, set it to turn on when you log into your OS X account, and set the acknowledgment sound the computer will make when it recognizes a command.
- Under the Listening tab, you can adjust the settings that determine when the computer will listen for a voice command.
- Under the Commands tab, you can select the set(s) of commands for which the computer will listen.