speakeleven.com

What It Is

Speak11 is a text-to-speech tool for macOS: users can select text in any app and press a system-wide shortcut to have it read aloud. It runs from the menu bar and requires macOS 13+. The tool itself is free and open source under the Unlicense, making it a good fit for Mac users who want to quickly listen to text from browsers, editors, PDFs, or Electron apps.

Core Features

At its core, Speak11 offers two TTS engines: ElevenLabs cloud TTS and Kokoro local TTS. ElevenLabs requires users to provide their own API Key and is aimed at delivering cloud-based voice quality; Kokoro runs entirely locally on the Mac, with no network, credits, or usage limits required, but it does require Apple Silicon. Speak11 includes 12 built-in Kokoro voices and also supports adding more voices by pasting an ElevenLabs voice ID. Parameters such as speed, stability, similarity, and style can be adjusted instantly from the menu bar.

Typical Use Cases and Output

Speak11’s strength lies in reading text across apps: browsers, editors, Electron apps, and more can all be triggered via a system-wide shortcut, which is difficult for individual webpages or apps to block. It also highlights its handling of PDFs, LaTeX, and Markdown, automatically converting equations, units, Greek letters, and citations into more natural spoken language. This makes it relatively friendly for research, writing, programming, and academic reading scenarios. However, the main page does not provide audio quality samples, Chinese reading examples, or details on multilingual coverage, so Chinese support still needs to be tested in practice.

Pricing and Privacy

Speak11 itself is free and open source; the local Kokoro mode has no network requirement, credits, or usage limits. Pricing for ElevenLabs mode depends on ElevenLabs, and the page does not disclose specific costs. On privacy, local TTS is the biggest highlight, as text can remain entirely on the device. The ElevenLabs API Key is written directly to macOS Keychain rather than to a file. However, the page does not further explain how text is transmitted or processed in cloud mode.

Pros, Cons, and Who It’s For

Its advantages are that it is lightweight, free, open source, globally available across apps, and offers both cloud-based quality and offline control. Its spoken conversion of technical documents, formulas, and citations is also a distinctive feature. The downsides are that it is limited to macOS 13+, local mode is limited to Apple Silicon, ElevenLabs requires users to configure their own API Key, and there is limited information about Chinese support and customer support. It is best suited for heavy Mac users, researchers, developers, and anyone who wants to listen to documents offline.

China Access

The page does not provide information about access, payment, or mirrors for mainland China, so china access can only be considered unknown. If the ElevenLabs API or network access is restricted, users can try Kokoro local mode first. Alternatives include macOS built-in speech, ElevenLabs, OpenAI TTS, Azure Speech, or other local TTS tools.