How to turn off the voice guide on a TV
A TV that suddenly reads every menu aloud usually has its screen reader switched on, often by holding a button on the remote by accident. It is an accessibility feature for people with low vision, and every brand has a quick way to turn it on and off.
This guide shows, according to Samsung, Amazon and Roku, how to switch off the talking voice on the most common TVs and streaming sticks.
Samsung TV: Voice Guide
Samsung says to press and hold the volume button on the Smart Remote for at least 2 seconds, choose Accessibility in the shortcut menu that appears, select Voice Guide and set it to Off. In the menus the path is Settings, All Settings, General & Privacy, Accessibility, Voice Guide Settings; names vary by model and region. On some remotes, holding Mute opens the same accessibility shortcuts. Samsung notes that the shortcut menu itself may still speak even with Voice Guide off.
Amazon Fire TV: VoiceView
Amazon says to press and hold the Back and Menu buttons on the remote for a couple of seconds; you hear “VoiceView exiting” when it turns off, and the same buttons turn it back on. In the settings, go to Accessibility, choose VoiceView and confirm that you want to turn it off.
Roku: Screen Reader (Audio Guide)
On Roku the feature is called Screen Reader on newer software and Audio Guide on older. According to Roku’s community moderators, press the star button four times quickly to switch it off, which works while the shortcut is enabled. Otherwise press Home and go to Settings, Accessibility and Screen reader or Audio guide.
If the voice comes back
If the voice returns, the shortcut is being triggered again, often by a child or by a stuck button. Check the remote, and look in the accessibility settings for a shortcut option you can turn off on your model. Audio description, a separate narration track for films, is set in the playback or audio options of each app.
When a voice is what you want
Sometimes a synthetic voice is useful on purpose: an announcement for a home assistant, a voice-over for a family video or a reminder for someone who cannot read the screen. SuperClonica voices any text for free: hear catalog voices on their pages with 30 to 100 characters, or install the free engine with python -m pip install superclonica-cpu and save speech as a file offline.