Read4Me Support

Answers to common questions, and how to reach the developer.

Contact

Email read4me.app@icloud.com. Please mention your macOS version (Apple menu > About This Mac) and, if the problem concerns a voice, the voice's name. Replies usually take a few days.

Frequently asked questions

Reading starts in the wrong place, or reads everything

Read starts at the insertion point and continues to the end of the document. Select text to read only the selection. When the cursor is at the end or the selection is empty, the whole document is read.

Where do I get more voices?

Choose Help > Download More Voices… in Read4Me, or open System Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak (called Spoken Content before macOS 26) and click System Voice > Manage Voices. Enhanced and Premium voices sound best; each is a separate download from Apple. Read4Me lists the voices for the languages in your Language & Region settings; turn on "Show all languages" in the Voices panel to see every voice.

Personal Voice is listed as "Speak only"

macOS reads Personal Voice aloud but does not render it to a file, so Read4Me can speak with it but not export it. Choose another voice for Export Audio File and Export Audiobook. To use Personal Voice at all, allow it once with the "Allow Personal Voice…" button in the Voices panel.

Dialog mode does not switch voices

Dialog mode must be turned on in the Voices panel or the View menu. A voice tag is the voice's name in capitals between double square brackets on its own line, for example [[SAMANTHA]], and the voice must be installed. Double-click a voice in the Voices panel to insert a correct tag.

A tag is read out loud

Voice and Coach tags are only recognised when spelled exactly, with two opening and two closing brackets. Edit > Remove Tags deletes every tag in the document if you want to start over.

An EPUB will not open

Books protected by DRM cannot be read; Read4Me says so instead of opening an empty document. Books bought from Apple Books or other stores with copy protection fall into this category. Unprotected EPUB 2 and EPUB 3 books open as text.

PDF is not supported

Read4Me reads text documents, not page layouts. Export the PDF as text or RTF from Preview or the app that made it, then open that file in Read4Me.

The Apple Intelligence button is disabled or shows an error

Apple Intelligence requires macOS 26 and a Mac that supports it, with Apple Intelligence turned on in System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri. While the model is still downloading, the button explains that it is not ready yet. Very long documents exceed the model's limit; select a shorter passage.

Auto-Cast finds no characters, or is unavailable

Auto-Cast uses Apple Intelligence, so it needs the same setup as the Apple Intelligence button. It works best on stories with quoted speech; very long texts exceed the model's limit, so select a chapter. Apply inserts [[VOICE]] tags and turns on Dialog Mode; choose Edit > Undo to take them back.

Translate asks me to download a language

Translation uses Apple's Translation framework and runs on your Mac. The first time you use a language pair, macOS offers to download it in System Settings > General > Language & Region > Translation Languages. It needs macOS 15 or later. For the best result, install a voice for the target language; the Translate sheet shows which voice will read it.

Dictation does nothing

The toolbar's microphone button starts the system's dictation. Turn dictation on in System Settings > Keyboard > Dictation first; macOS shows its own prompt the first time. Reading aloud stops when dictation starts so the voice is not transcribed.

My settings from Read4Me 1.6 are gone

Read4Me 2.0 reads the voice, speed and dialog settings of version 1.6 on first launch when both versions are installed under the same user account. If the old preferences were deleted, choose a voice and speed again in the Voices panel.

Version history

2.0

Rewritten in Swift for macOS 15 and later. Word highlighting for every voice, Enhanced, Premium and Personal Voice, in-app audio and audiobook export, EPUB import without helper tools, Shortcuts action, dictation, Apple Intelligence, Auto-Cast, translation, Spotlight and Siri actions, in-app help, eleven languages.

1.6.15

Last release of the 2006–2015 Objective-C version. PDF support removed.