How to Use the Read Aloud Feature on Preview?
Preview also provides text to speech feature with its user to read the content on the app out loud. To activate the preview read-aloud option:
- Open a document with a Preview
- Click “Edit” on the left top of the computer’s screen
- Hover on “Speech”
- Click “Start Speaking”
You can read aloud the entire content in the document, or you can just read aloud the selected text by highlighting the part you want to listen to and then activating the speech feature.
Why Should You Consider Using Real Aloud Option on Preview?
Preview can open most of the documents you want on your Mac, including your lecture notes, book PDFs, or slide shows.
Instead of reading all the written content, you can activate the text-to-speech API and listen aloud to the content by using the dictation feature.
It can be easier to comprehend the spoken content rather than the written content occasionally.
What are the Further Features of Preview Dictation?
Once you use Preview read-aloud, the default system voice will be activated. You can customize the voiceover in the system preferences:
- On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click Accessibility in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.)
- Click Spoken Content on the right.
- Click the “System Voice” pop-up menu, then choose a voice.
- To adjust how fast the voice speaks, drag the “Speaking rate” slider.
- Click Play Sample to test the voice and speaking rate.
What is Read Aloud?
Read aloud is using text-to-speech software to listen to the content instead of reading it. You can use read aloud feature in almost every app and browser, such as PDFs, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft.
PowerPoint, Firefox, Safari, or Google Chrome.
What is Preview?
Preview is the vendor-supplied image and PDF viewer of Apple’s MacOS operating system.
In addition to viewing and printing digital images and Portable Document Format files, it can edit these media types.
How to Use Preview on Mac?
Once you open Preview, it provides:
- Select text
- Add text
- Shape tool
- Area select tool
- Sign tool
- Share
Select Text
You can use this tool to select lines of text on a page, copy them, and paste them into a different application.
Add Text
Use this tool to create a textbox inside your document. Move your cursor to an area of the document where you want to add a text box. Click on that area and start typing. You can choose to show fonts for more options.
Shape Tool
Use this tool to insert a shape into your PDF document.
Area Select Tool
Use this tool to select an image or another non-text section of your PDF document.
Sign Tool
Use this tool to add your digital signature to a PDF document. You can use the camera on your Mac to convert your actual signature to a digital signature.
Share Feature
You also have the ability to add an image or photo and share files on social media accounts using any social network accounts you’ve set up in Internet Accounts.
What are the Further Features Provided with Preview?
You can do the following with Preview:
- Editing PDF documents
- Editing images
- Import and export
Editing PDF Documents
Preview can encrypt PDF documents and restrict their use; for example, it is possible to save an encrypted PDF so that a password is required to copy data from the document or to print it.
However, encrypted PDFs cannot be edited further, so the original author should always keep an unencrypted version.
A new “edit button” where the picture can be edited is introduced in Version 7. The “edit button” allows options to insert shapes and lines and do cropping, among other things.
Editing Images
Preview offers essential image correction tools and features such as shape extraction, color extraction, cropping, and rotation.
Import and Export
Preview can directly access image scanners supported by macOS and import images from the scanner. It can also convert between image formats and export to BMP, JP2, JPEG, PDF, etc.
Using macOS’s print engine, it is also possible to “print into” a Postscript file, a PDF-X file, or directly save the file in the iPhoto like scanned photos.
How to view photos and PDFs in Preview on Mac
Preview is the default app for viewing images and PDF files on your Mac. So, any time you double-click on or launch one of those files, it will open in Preview.
If for some reason, another app has taken over responsibility for a certain file type, and you want to give it back to Preview, you make the change right in the Finder:
- Right-click on the file you want to open with Preview
- Hover on “Open With…”
- Click “Preview”
Can I Use Preview on iPhone or iPad?
Instead of Preview, Preview Mini is developed for iOS users. You can download the app from AppStore and start using it.
