saystop

A floating stop button for macOS say speech output.

say is a great built-in TTS command, but once it starts talking there is no built-in way to shut it up from the GUI. saystop runs say and shows a small, always-on-top panel near the top of your screen for as long as speech is playing. Click Stop or close the panel to kill the speech immediately, or click Pause to suspend and resume it. The panel never steals keyboard focus.

It is especially handy when scripts, agents, or voice-output rules call say unattended and you want a kill switch.

Requirements

• macOS 12.0+ (Apple Silicon and Intel, universal binary)
• No other dependencies: it wraps /usr/bin/say

Install

Homebrew (tap)

brew install DevArtsLab/tap/saystop

curl installer

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DevArtsLab/saystop/main/install.sh | sh

The release binary is unsigned, so the installer clears the quarantine attribute after verifying the SHA-256 checksum. Options via env vars: SAYSTOP_VERSION, SAYSTOP_PREFIX, SAYSTOP_SHIM=1.

From source

git clone https://github.com/DevArtsLab/saystop.git
cd saystop
make          # universal binary in build/saystop
make install  # copies to /opt/homebrew/bin, /usr/local/bin, or ~/.local/bin

Usage

saystop "Hello, I have a stop button now"

All arguments are passed through to say, so -v, -f, -r, etc. all work. Invocations that produce no audible speech (-o, -v ?) skip the panel.

Give every say call the button (optional shim)

saystop --install-shim

This writes a tiny say shell shim into the first writable PATH directory that precedes /usr/bin (usually /opt/homebrew/bin or /usr/local/bin). After that, plain say "..." from any terminal, script, or agent pops the stop button. It never overwrites an existing say file that is not a saystop shim.

saystop --shim-status     # check
saystop --uninstall-shim  # remove
/usr/bin/say "..."        # always bypasses the shim

Mute switch

saystop --mute           # silence all speech until unmuted
saystop --unmute         # re-enable
saystop --mute-status    # check

Muting drops a flag file at ~/.config/saystop/muted. Both saystop invocations and shimmed say calls check it and exit silently. Non-speaking invocations (-o file output) still work while muted, and /usr/bin/say always bypasses the mute. --mute/--unmute also post a macOS notification; append --quiet to skip it.

Quick Action kill switch and mute toggle

extras/Stop Speaking.workflow is a macOS Quick Action that runs killall say. extras/Toggle Speech.workflow toggles the mute flag and posts a notification confirming the new state. Install either or both for Services menu entries plus assignable global hotkeys:

cp -R "extras/Stop Speaking.workflow" ~/Library/Services/
cp -R "extras/Toggle Speech.workflow" ~/Library/Services/
/System/Library/CoreServices/pbs -flush

Then find them under any app's App Name > Services menu, or bind hotkeys in System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services.

How it works

For plain speech (text plus -v, -r, -f), saystop speaks through AVSpeechSynthesizer and displays a non-activating floating NSPanel. The panel closes itself when speech ends. Clicking Stop or closing the window stops speech immediately; Pause suspends at the next word boundary and becomes Resume. Invocations saystop cannot speak itself run as a /usr/bin/say child process with a Stop-only panel, and non-speaking invocations (-o, -v ?) are exec'd with no panel at all.

Uninstall

saystop --uninstall-shim
brew uninstall saystop        # or: rm the saystop binary from your bin dir

License

MIT