Mavis AAC

Mavis AAC is a simple app for interacting with Apple’s built-in speech synthesizer.

Our goal is to replace the built-in Live Speech app with something a bit more capable and user-friendly for those who rely on speech synthesis daily.

If available, Mavis can speak using Apple’s Personal Voice as well.

For maximum reliability, Mavis AAC is completely offline and requires no Internet connection to function correctly.

Mavis AAC works on MacOS as well as iPads and iPhones. It is very similar on all platforms, but each version has small tweaks so that Mavis feels better integrated with your device.

On the iPad, Mavis AAC has been optimized for use with an external wireless keyboard.

MacOS Compatibility

Mavis AAC should work all the way back to Big Sur. However, Personal Voice and FaceTime integration only work on Sonoma or newer.

Features At A Glance

History Repeat

Quickly repeat any of the last few phrases without having to retype them. There are simple keyboard shortcuts to control the selection.

Tab Complete

Using the tab key, you can quickly access frequent phrases that best match a few typed words. Your list of phrases can be easily edited — refer to the Tab Completion section of the Help document for more detailed information.

Pronunciations

English is a fickle beast, so you can edit the pronunciations of specific words so that it sounds how it should. This is most often useful with proper nouns, names and acronyms.

You can also use this to expand texting shorthand. More information and examples are available in the Fixing Pronunciations section of the Help document.

Soundbites

If you have done some voice banking, Mavis AAC can play your exact voice from the recordings when you type the exact word or phrase in the soundbite.

MacOS FaceTime SharePlay Integration

If you are making FaceTime calls on your Mac, you can add the audio generated by Mavis directly into your FaceTime call along with your microphone. The other participants can hear you laugh or make other sounds, but you can quickly speak clearly with your voice synthesizer when you need to.

Installing on MacOS

Download Mavis-AAC.dmg and run the application.

Mavis AAC will trigger permission requests for Accessibility Access and Personal Voice.

Accessibility Permission

Mavis AAC will trigger a permission request for Accessibility Access so it can integrate with FaceTime calls.

Select “Open System Settings”.

Make sure this toggle is enabled to allow Mavis to integrate with FaceTime calls.

Personal Voice

Before Mavis AAC can ask for permission to use your Personal Voice, you must allow applications to even request that permission.

Make sure this toggle is enabled and restart Mavis AAC. You should now see a request for permission to use your Personal Voice.

Once you click “Allow”, Mavis AAC will be able to use your personal voice.

Documentation

More detailed information is available in the Help Docs.