Siri voice iOS 13, works with voiceover or not?

By Erick, 20 September, 2019

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi.

I have iOS13 installed and have noticed that I can't use the new natural Siri voice with voiceover. Any tips on how you can use it with voiceover, or is their something wrong? Thanks. I really am looking forward to using this voice.

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Comments

By kool_turk on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:43

I had the same problem as well.

What I did was plug my phone into power and wait a while.

I guess things need to download in the background, which explains why certain voices won't work right away.

Alex also appeared later, and yes, the new siri voice does indeed work with voiceover, I tested it.

By Erick on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:43

That’s very weird. For some reason when I use it, it switches to the iOS 12 version.

By BBS on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:43

If you're talking about the new neural TTS Siri voice, it looks like there's no way to use that version with Voiceover. Why Apple chose not to let us use it is a mystery, but I'm happy I can still use the Siri voices even though it's not the new one Siri uses.

Thank you for this. I will try it again and see if I can get the new SIRI voices. If I understand correctly, it sounds a lot like the one from iOS 11, but it's not supposed to be exactly the same. I hope to be able to use it. The SIRI male is very much improved.

By Holger Fiallo on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:43

Still have the old siri voice. I did notice that if you want to see new siri, turn off voiceover and ask siri to tell you a story. Do same with voiceover you will notice difference. FYI. Chicago is in the USA.

By Piotr Machacz on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:43

I suspect the new Siri voice might actually be generated in the cloud, though Siri tries to be pretty seamless at switching. If you ask Siri to turn off Wi-Fi, notice it starts speaking, and midway through suddenly interrupts itself, and says "Uh oh, I lost the connection! Let's try that again!" and repeats what it was trying to speak but this time with the local voice.

The 2 voices sound quite different. The neural voice has a slight... Sort of fuzzy sound to it, and a somewhat different more neutral but much smoother intonation. The local voice is a bit more clear but the intonation is noticeably more jumpy.

Lastly, I think Siri prefers the local voice for some queries. If you ask for the weather, a Wikipedia article or a calculation result, that'll probably be spoken with the neural voice. But ask it to read your notifications or Messages and the local voice takes over.

By Zachary on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:43

In reply to by Piotr Machacz

I think your theory about the neural voice being in the cloud could be correct on some devices that may not have the processing power to handle it locally. I just tried that Wi-Fi trick on my iPhone XR running iOS 13, and didn’t see the result you're describing. On my end the neural version of the voice was used to say the entire turning off Wi-Fi announcement. What device are you using to test this? I reported to Apple Accessibility, and they said the issue would be reported to the engineering team, so hopefully they will be able to get Neural TTS working on supported devices with VoiceOver soon. I partly suspect that it may be a case of what I believe happened on macOS last year, where VoiceOver is not getting an updated list of voices from Apple's servers and falling back to the iOS 12 version of this list instead. I suspect this because there is a new Indian English voice from Nuance called Rishi, however only the Compact version is able to be used. There is no download for the Enhanced Quality version as there is with other Nuance voices. I reported this to Apple as well so hopefully it will be fixed soon.

By Karok on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:43

hi what is the neural voice called, versus the original?

By KE7ZUM on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:43

I hope t hear the new nural voice. Iv'e heard it while testing iOs 13 and man does it sound amazing, better than google's voice. I have 3 andorid phones and 5 google homes in the house so I hear the google voices all the time. Lol!

By Melissa on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:43

I took the plunge and installed iOS13, and I have noticed that the supposedly new Siri voice sounds just like the old one. Maybe the new voice hasn't rolled out yet? I have tried the english female voice.

By Piotr Machacz on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:43

I'm using an iPhone 7, so that could have something to do with it, and I'm on the 13.1 beta which may also be a factor.

I agree about the voice quality though. You can tell it's a neural voice very much like what Google and now also Amazon is doing, but I feel this is less noticeable with Siri.

By jcdjmac (not verified) on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:43

Hi,
Same here. I'm on an iPhone 7 running iOS 13.1 beta as well, and the voice is the same, accept it has improved a little bit on the inflection.

By roman on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:43

Hello. I tried the new voice of siri, but it is talking like IOS11's voice of siri. But, when I speak to siri as an assistent, it has the inflection that apple has mentioned. It is strange.