Windows Narrator: how to turn it on or off and change its voice
Narrator is the screen reader built into Windows: it reads aloud what is on the screen, for people who are blind or have low vision, and for anyone who wants text read to them. It also starts by accident surprisingly often, because of a keyboard shortcut.
This guide covers the shortcut, the settings, the voice and speed, the natural voices of recent Windows versions, and what to use when you want the speech saved as an audio file rather than read out once, based on Microsoft’s own Narrator guide.
Turn Narrator on or off
Press the Windows logo key + Ctrl + Enter to start Narrator, and the same keys again to stop it; on some earlier Windows versions the shortcut is the Windows logo key + Enter. If Narrator started by itself, that shortcut is almost always why. On the sign-in screen, the accessibility button in the lower-right corner has a Narrator switch as well.
Narrator settings, voice and speed
Press the Windows logo key + Ctrl + N, or open Settings, then Accessibility, then Narrator on Windows 11 (Ease of Access, then Narrator on Windows 10). There you choose the voice and its speed, decide whether Narrator starts by itself after sign-in, and change the Narrator key, Caps Lock or Insert by default, which you hold for Narrator’s own commands.
Natural voices
Recent Windows 11 versions offer natural voices for Narrator that sound far less robotic. Add one in Narrator settings with the button for adding a natural voice; after the download it works on the device with no internet connection. Microsoft added natural voices in more languages with the September 2023 update, so the list depends on your Windows version and language.
When you need an audio file, not a screen reader
Narrator reads the screen aloud as you use it; it is not a tool for making voice-over files. To turn a script, an article or subtitles into WAV or MP3, use a text to speech app. The free SuperClonica engine does it offline on Windows with natural neural voices in 31 languages, and the catalog adds narrator, announcer and character voices you can try on their pages first.