Aloud 0.2.0

A big update: a simpler menu, a faster engine, and no download at all.

Changed

• Native menu instead of the popup. Click the menu bar icon for play/pause, stop, replay, voice, speed, hotkey and launch at login. The caption and word-by-word highlighting are gone. If a hotkey press finds no text, Aloud beeps and shows the reason at the top of the menu.
• Faster, lighter engine. Kokoro now runs on the Neural Engine through FluidAudio's CoreML port, instead of on the GPU through MLX. On an M2, for a 420-character paragraph, audio now starts after about 0.3 seconds instead of about 1.2 seconds, and peak memory went from about 8.6 GB to 0.7 GB.
• The voice model is built into the app. Aloud makes no network connections. The model is checked against SHA-256 checksums at every launch, and a damaged copy repairs itself from the app. The old ~340 MB download in ~/Library/Application Support/Aloud/Models is deleted automatically.
• 20 US voices. The UK voices are removed, because the new engine pronounces English with US rules only. If you had chosen a UK voice, Aloud switches to Heart.
• Choosing a voice in the menu plays a short sample.

Faster

• A long first sentence is split at its first comma, so audio starts sooner. Short sentences are merged, so there is less work per read.
• The audio output starts while the first sentence synthesizes, not after.
• The audio engine stops when a read ends, so the output device does not stay awake.
• In apps where Aloud copies the selection (Slack, VS Code and other Electron apps), it reads the copied text as soon as it arrives instead of always waiting 300 ms. A hung app can no longer stall the hotkey for about 6 seconds.

Install

1. Download the .dmg below.
2. Open it and drag Aloud into Applications.
3. Open Aloud once and dismiss the warning (it isn't notarized). Then open System Settings → Privacy & Security, click Open Anyway, and confirm.
4. Grant Accessibility access when asked. The first launch takes about 10 seconds to prepare the voices.

If you are upgrading, macOS may ask for Accessibility access again.

Requires macOS 15+ on Apple Silicon. The app is about 120 MB, because it includes the voice model.

Aloud 0.1.7

Fixed

• The menu bar icon could get stuck animating forever after a read was interrupted (pressing the hotkey again on new text, hitting Stop, or previewing a voice while something was still playing). Root cause was a race in the audio completion tracking; fixed with a generation-token guard. Verified with a targeted interrupt test before shipping.

Install

1. Download the .dmg below.
2. Open it and drag Aloud into Applications.
3. Right-click Aloud.app -> Open the first time (it's not notarized), then confirm Open.
4. First launch walks you through granting Accessibility access and downloading the voice model (~340MB, one-time).

Requires macOS 15+ on Apple Silicon. See the README for details.

Aloud 0.1.6

What's new

• The voice list in Settings now makes it obvious it scrolls: a persistent scroll indicator, and the last visible row fades into the background instead of looking like the complete list.

Install

1. Download the .dmg below.
2. Open it and drag Aloud into Applications.
3. Right-click Aloud.app -> Open the first time (it's not notarized), then confirm Open.
4. First launch walks you through granting Accessibility access and downloading the voice model (~340MB, one-time).

Requires macOS 15+ on Apple Silicon. See the README for details.

Aloud 0.1.5

What's new

• Panel is now genuinely fixed-size (not just nominally) — Now Playing and Settings each get their own fixed size, switching with a smooth animated resize when you navigate between them, rather than reflowing based on content.
• Visual redesign: real brand accent color (the app was silently using the system accent color before), a solid white/adaptive panel instead of the translucent gray vibrancy look, cards, icon badges, a mini waveform, and a larger accent play/pause button.
• Settings no longer needs an all-encompassing scroll — only the 28-voice list scrolls internally; the hotkey, speed, login, permission, and model rows are always visible.
• Accessibility contrast pass: measured several color pairs by hand and found real WCAG failures (secondary text ~2.6:1, accent-on-tint text ~2.9:1, white icon on dark-mode accent fill ~1.8:1) — all fixed. Added VoiceOver labels to every icon-only button and made the mini waveform respect Reduce Motion.

Install

1. Download the .dmg below.
2. Open it and drag Aloud into Applications.
3. Right-click Aloud.app -> Open the first time (it's not notarized), then confirm Open.
4. First launch walks you through granting Accessibility access and downloading the voice model (~340MB, one-time).

Requires macOS 15+ on Apple Silicon. See the README for details.

Aloud 0.1.2

What's new

• Word highlighting now uses a yellow background instead of bold text. Bolding changed each word's width and reflowed the whole caption line every time the highlight moved; a background doesn't, so the text stays put and only the highlight moves.
• The caption window now scrolls forward only when needed, instead of shifting on almost every word.

Install

1. Download the .dmg below.
2. Open it and drag Aloud into Applications.
3. Right-click Aloud.app -> Open the first time (it's not notarized), then confirm Open.
4. First launch walks you through granting Accessibility access and downloading the voice model (~340MB, one-time).

Requires macOS 15+ on Apple Silicon. See the README for details.

Aloud 0.1.1

What's new

• Karaoke-style word highlighting: as a selection is read aloud, the word currently being spoken is highlighted in the popover, using Kokoro's own per-word timing.
• Popover is a bit larger, with more room for the voice list.
• Several bug fixes from an adversarial code review: a crash on certain short chunks, a "stuck reading forever" state when a chunk failed to synthesize, a clipboard-corruption bug in the text-selection fallback, and removal of a debug audio-logging path that shouldn't have shipped.

Install

1. Download the .dmg below.
2. Open it and drag Aloud into Applications.
3. Right-click Aloud.app -> Open the first time (it's not notarized), then confirm Open.
4. First launch walks you through granting Accessibility access and downloading the voice model (~340MB, one-time).

Requires macOS 15+ on Apple Silicon. See the README for details.

Aloud 0.1.0

First release.

Select text anywhere on macOS, press a hotkey, hear it read aloud — powered by Kokoro TTS running fully on-device via MLX. No cloud, no accounts, no Python.

Install

1. Download the .dmg below.
2. Open it and drag Aloud into Applications.
3. Right-click Aloud.app -> Open the first time (it's not notarized -- no paid Apple developer account behind this yet), then confirm Open.
4. First launch walks you through granting Accessibility access and downloading the voice model (~340MB, one-time).

Requires macOS 15+ on Apple Silicon. See the README for details.