Overall Functionality

[davekt47]

It is a long time since I regularly used Text Aloud and the basic functionality appears much the same.
The options seem much more 'cleaned up' and now once set to the options you want less intrusive to your regular operation.
In my view the Australian Lisa voice (Acapella) is the most realistic English female voice with far fewer stocatto features making it smoother and more realistic.
The changes introduced in edition 25 appear logical, with the pause rather than stop while talking a good move.
I've yet to properly explore the pop up features while in Chrome etc, but initially feel the pop up option to speak the text maybe displayed for too short a time - however this might just be because of my lack of awareness at this early stage of use so I reserve judgement. I'll investigate whether a temporary offering of a single keypress to enact the option is available, rather than the more awkward navigating to the pop up to choose the option.

[Jim Bretti]

You're referring to the popup displayed when you copy text to the clipboard? If thats what you mean, there is setting you can configure to control how long the prompt is displayed. In TextAloud Settings, select Clipboard Options in the left panel. In the Prompt Options section you'll see the option 'Display Prompt For ... Seconds'. You can change the default value of 3 to a larger value.

Also, in the left pane, expand the item "Shortcuts and Hotleys". In Hotkey Setup, you can configure system wide hotkeys for speaking selected text in other applications, or speaking text currently on the clipboard.

TextAloud 4 also has a new floating toolbar that you can use for speaking selected text in other applications. From the TextAloud main menu, select Control Center -> Show Floating Toolbar. With the toolbar displayed, you can select text in other applications and click the floating toolbar speak button.