Readable for Mac v2 is a new app rather than an update. The earlier Readable Toolbar for Mac sat in the menu bar and opened the right page of macOS’s own accessibility settings — Spoken Content, Voice Control, Display and so on. Version 2 brings the Sensory Readable approach to the Mac: Readable does the reading itself, in any app, with its own tools.
New in v2
- A floating reading toolbar with Play/Stop, hover modes, dictation, prediction, word tools and settings in one place — see Toolbar Buttons.
- Reads in any app, including PDFs, images and apps that don’t share their text, by recognising text on screen — see Play and Read Selection.
- Four hover modes — Word, Line, Sentence and Document — see Hover Read Modes.
- Word underline that tracks each word as it is spoken — see Word Underline.
- Spoken-text banner — a resizable window showing the words being read — see Spoken-Text Banner.
- Text Extractor (OCR) — drag a box around any text to copy it and hear it — see Text Extractor.
- Word prediction and autocorrect that work as you type in other apps — see Word Prediction and Autocorrect.
- Word tools — Look up, Thesaurus, the Word popup with a word’s symbol and syllables (where available), and homophones in Word and Pages — see Word Tools.
- Text appearance for Word and Pages — font, size, line and letter spacing, and colour — see Text Appearance.
- Save to audio file as M4A — see Save to Audio File.
- Voice input, Key Echo and ambient sounds with automatic dimming of the Music and Spotify apps.
- Interface in English, French and Spanish — see Languages.
What has changed from the earlier version
The earlier version’s shortcuts into macOS settings — Display and colour filters, Spoken Content, Voice Control and Captions — are not part of Readable for Mac v2. Those macOS features are still available in System Settings → Accessibility and work alongside Readable.