Windows Narrator is a free tool from Microsoft, designed to read aloud the text on your computer screen. It’s essentially a screen reader that augments the Windows experience for the visually impaired.
In this article, we’ve going to dive in to different ways of using Narrator in Windows computer. So let’s get started.
How to turn on Narrator?
To use Narrator in your Windows computer, you’ll first have to manually turn it on. Here’s how you can do that:
- Launch the Settings app. Go to the Start menu search bar, type in ‘settings,’ and select the Best match. Alternatively, press the Windows key + I.
- From the Settings menu, select Accessibility.
- Click on Narrator.
Now, simply toggle on the Narrator button and screen-reader feature will be turned on. As soon as you do that, you’ll receive a heads-up on keyboard changes in the software. Ignore that and click on OK.
A new dialog box will pop open. This is the Narrator menu, and if you do everything right, the app should be reading aloud the text on your screen. Any other actions you take, say, change the switch of the tabs or click on the Start menu, should also be getting verbalized by the Narrator by now.
Also, whenever you need to turn off Narrator, simply turn off the toggle under Narrator that you used for enabling it.
How to use Narrator in Windows?
Now that you’ve turned on the Narrator in your Windows PC, let’s get into the different ways you can tweak the Narrator settings and options, and then use them to your liking.
In the Settings menu, head to the Use Narrator section. From there, expand the option for Narrator. You can then choose to check the radio boxes for starting up the Narrator before and after you sign in to your PC.
Just below it is the option to enable or disable shortcuts for Narrator. Also included in the Narrator section are the options to launch the Narrator Home—the dialog box you first saw when you first enabled it, and a link to the complete guide to Narrator.
Tweak Narrator Voice
Jumping to the next section in the Narrator’s menu—which is the Narrator’s voice—you can fiddle with the Voice of your PC. Simply click on the dropdown menu in front of Voice, and select from the five voices available.
Don’t like the default option of voices? No problem. Just click on Add voices and select Add voices from under the heading of Manage voices, and you’ll get a host of different language options other than English.
You can also manage the speed and pitch of Narrator voice by tweaking the sliding scales of respective options.
Edit the Narrator Verbosity
The Verbosity section helps you decide how your text should be read by the Narrator. Should format text get emphasized? Or Should it read advanced texts? You can set these and a few other similar things in verbosity.
Moreover, you can decide the specific keys the Narrator should speak for.
Manage your mouse and keyboard settings
In this section, you can edit the key you want to set as ‘Narrator key’. Moreover, you also get to set the keyboard layout for the Narrator, while at the same time enable the mouse interaction for the Narrator.
Narrator Cursor
By turning on the Narrator Cursor, you can enable the Narrator Cursor to focus on where the Narrator speaker is reading at the moment.
Windows Narrator, explained
This brings our short brief on the Windows Narrator to a close. But don’t stop here. We highly recommend you go through the complete guide to Narrator located right under the Use Narrator section in Narrator settings.
