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Thanks in advance. Hey there, and welcome to today's Unmute presents education, Content, Real. Got to come up with a name for this. If you're getting value out of the Unmute Presents podcast content, please don't hesitate to go to your favorite podcast app and leave us a review or comment. Your feedback is what improves the experience for all listeners. Today I'm going to walk you through the process of configuring Voiceover for preferences to be used on a portable device. Now, the portable device that I'm using is kind of extreme. I think it's four terabyte. Yeah, it's a four terabyte external hard drive. But this is just for demonstration purposes. You definitely don't need something that big. You actually can put your portable preferences on a two gigabyte thumb drive if you'd like, and take them with you. That's the advantage to this. When I turn Voiceover on, it doesn't do anything different. It just says Voiceover on. But if I press Vo F eight.
Opening voiceover Utility voiceover Utility voiceover Utility Window Utility Categories table general selected has keyboard focus and select the General category.
You'll see an option in this section. Now why might you want to do this? Let's say, like myself, you've gone through and spent the time to configure your numpad commander, your trackpad well, I don't have a trackpad, but your trackpad commander and your keyboard commander and you've configured the verbosity and made all these configurations to your voiceover. And then you use a spouse's Mac, or then you use someone else's Mac and you're like, why is this doing this this way? Well, portable preferences is the answer. With Portable preferences, when you turn voiceover on, it will ask you, do you want to use the Portable Preferences on and then insert the name of the drive that's connected. Voiceover is smart enough to realize that there is portable Preferences on the root directory of the drive that you've connected. So for example, if I jump over.
To finder finder external SSE window external. And I'm on my external SSD and I tap the letter V external s. Parallels folder slack application, it actually takes. Me to Slack, which doesn't make any sense, but that is showing you that there's nothing in here. So if I command tab back over. To Voiceover Utility voiceover Utility Window utility Categories table general and then I Vo. Right arrow or in my case use numpad six. We're going to locate Portable Preferences off.
Image and that says Portable Preferences off. Let's press Vo. Right arrow setup, button, set up portable preferences. We're going to choose the setup. Portable preferences option. Press Vo space in dialog volumes table select an external Drive so now this. Is telling you select an external drive. So I'm going to tap the letter. X external SD and then press Vo end OK, default button and we'll press Vo Space Stop button. Closing. Dialog stop button. Now it says set up portable preferences.
And it says set up portable preferences. If we press Vo right arrow keeping. Your Voiceover Preferences up to date on the drive external SD and we're going. To now go back over to keeping. Your voice Vo left Stop button. Portable Preferences on. Portable Preferences is on. Now anytime you make a change to your Voiceover Preferences, those changes will be reflected on the Portable Preferences file that's now been stored on the root directory. Of your external drive. Let's take a look at that.
Command q finder external SSD window slack Application and then if I press V now voiceover folder there's now a voiceover folder. We can go in there voiceover Four portable group one of one. And there voiceover for portable. Now you might be saying, Michael, this is good, but I just need a backup of my voiceover preferences. So when I get a new Mac, or if I reset my Mac, then all I have to do is import it. And that's great, that works. Let me show you how to do.
That with VOF eight voiceover Utility voiceover Utility Window utility Categories table and then. We'Ll go up to the File menu. Menu bar apple Voiceover File we'll go down File menu import Preferences ellipsis Export Preferences ellipsis Command Shift E so you.
Can use Command Shift E to export your preferences. You can use Command Shift I to import your preferences. So voiceover always works the way you expect it to. That's been a quick teach you something on Sunday episode from the Unmute team. Hope you found this to be useful. If you have, please don't hesitate to share with a friend or someone you don't necessarily like to show them how easy it is to run voiceover from a portable drive. No more leaving your Voiceover Preferences on your Mac or at home.