Use VoiceOver to hear whitespace on Mac
When reading or editing text, VoiceOver can indicate repeated spaces and speak leading indentation.
Note: VO represents the VoiceOver modifier. See Use the VoiceOver modifier.
Hear repeated spaces
VoiceOver can indicate when text contains repeated spaces between words and at the end of a line. VoiceOver does not indicate single spaces.
Open VoiceOver Utility (press VO-Fn-F8 when VoiceOver is on), click the Verbosity category, then click Text.
Click the “Repeated spaces” pop-up menu.
Choose how you want VoiceOver to indicate repeated spaces: Speak with Count or Play Tone. If you don’t want VoiceOver to speak repeated spaces, choose Do Nothing.
Hear leading indentation
VoiceOver can speak leading tab and space indentation as a count of tabs and spaces or as the level of indentation. This can be especially useful when reading or writing programming code.
Open VoiceOver Utility (press VO-Fn-F8 when VoiceOver is on), click the Verbosity category, then click Text.
Click the Leading Indentation pop-up menu.
Do one of the following to hear VoiceOver speak or sound indentation:
As a count of tabs and spaces: Choose Speak Number of Spaces and Tabs.
As the level of indentation: Choose Speak Level or Sound Level. Choose Customize Level to set a default number of spaces per indent.
Note: In some apps, such as Xcode, the level of indentation may be inferred from context, and may not match your VoiceOver Utility customization.
If you don’t want VoiceOver to speak indentation, choose Do Nothing.
If you’re using portable preferences on a guest computer when you change whitespace settings, the settings are saved to the portable preferences drive and not to the guest computer.
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