Skip to main content
Home

Main navigation

  • Apps
  • Forum
  • Blog
    • Podcast
    • Guides
    • Hardware & Accessory Reviews
    • Bug Tracker
    • Developer Resources
  • Log in

Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. Forums
  3. macOS and Mac Apps

How do I uninstall voices on my Mac?

By chad nezat, 16 June, 2014

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

I know you can't uninstall Alex, but how do you uninstall all of the other voices? Thanks for your help.

Options

  • Log in or register to post comments

Comments

Uninstalling voices on the macc

By Jeffry Miller

8 years 9 months ago

Go to your drive, system, library, speech, voices, and delete the voices you don't want.

Actually it won't remove them

By KE7ZUM

8 years 9 months ago

Actually it won't remove them. I found this out when browsing to /System/Library/Speech/Voices I managed to clear 4 gigs out by removing the voice folders except for alex of corse.

Take care.

A Simpler Way to Do It

By Ekaj

8 years 9 months ago

I didn't know about the system folder, will have to check that out. But here's how I've done it, and I think this deletes the unwanted voices from the list of available voices in the pop-up menus for the voice preferences. Go to the VoiceOver Utility, and in any of the pop-up menus on the Speech tab under Voices choose the Customize option. This will bring up a search field where you can type in a voice name, and there's also a list of available voices. It seems to me that this list contains all freely available voices on Apple's servers. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. Just check the checkboxes for the voices you want to keep, and uncheck those you want to remove. Some of them are checked by default. Hth.

While your right

By Daniel

8 years 9 months ago

Jake, while your right in that un-checking the voices you don't want or need anymore from the custom menu does get rid of them from the pop up where they live. At least for me, it has been the case that they still live on the system in the location previously mentioned in one of the above comments. I do know though and I have tested this myself that if you remove the HQ voice from again, the above comment and later decide that you would still like to use it. The next time you go to check it in the list of voices, it will just simply download again and hopefully once completed give it a bit of time or maybe re-start the system and try the re-downloaded voice again and it should be present again for you to use. Of course, since you've downloaded it, the size of the voice is used up on your hard drive again.
Please everyone, take note: I wouldn't recommend uninstalling the compact voices because:
1. They don't take up too much space anyway.
2. They maybe updated in a future OS.
3. Unless you really know you don't want them, and go ahead with deleting one of them, for me at least I was unable to get the compact version back. By this, I mean it didn't have the compact version displayed in the custom list of voices to choose from. So making an educated guess I'm assuming that compact voices don't get downloaded again. Once you've gorton rid of it, its gone. So just something to bare in mind.

For anyone interested it was Samantha compact I got rid of. Its alright for me though because I don't use that voice but it was a bit of a shock discovering that she wasn't in the custom voices to choose from.

Its not worth for me though performing a clean install just to see if I can restore her back to Voiceover. lol

Finally, back up, back up and once more for good measure, back up!!!
I can't stress that enough before making such changes to your system such as deleting voices. One does so at there own risk.

Its something we learn the easy way, or the hard way. :)

More Like This

What are your opinions on the new Siri voices? (Forum Topic)
How to Uninstall Extra Voices (Forum Topic)
What are everyones favorite voices? (Forum Topic)
help changing system voice for only one application (Forum Topic)
enhanced voices not appearing on IPad air2 (Forum Topic)
Does anyone know if it is possible to delete Siri voices? (Forum Topic)
Infovox ivox alternative (Forum Topic)
iOS 13 and voice over voices. (Forum Topic)

Site Information

  • About
  • Club AppleVis
  • FAQ
  • Contact

Unless stated otherwise, all content is copyright AppleVis. All rights reserved. © 2023 | Accessibility | Terms | Privacy