How to get older 32 bit voices from mountain lion and Mavericks on the Mac and possibility of getting these voices on the iPhone?

By Levi Gobin, 19 February, 2023

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hello everybody, I wanted to tell you a way to get apple‘s older voices while you still can. In my opinion, the older vocalizer voices from 2011, 2012, or 2013 sound significantly better than modern iPhones vocalizer voices and Mac vocalizer voices. Back then, these voices were under the brand name of real speak solo direct.
In this article I’m going to tell you how to get them in any 32 bit operating system on Mac, which means anything below macOS 10.15 Catalina.
Notes before continuing:
1. you will need at least one of the following:
• a folder containing the speech voices from a particular OS, such as mountain lion (see instructions later on for finding the required folder).
• a Mac with the version of macOS, such as mountain lion or Mavericks, or whatever older OS you want to get the speech voices from.
• a hard drive if necessary to copy the files between different max.
2. You will need to know how to copy files in the finder.
3. Just in case something goes wrong, you will need to learn how to open the terminal and remove the speech voices folder if something goes wrong.
4. That shouldn’t happen, but just in case removing the folder from the terminal doesn’t work, I recommend you either know how to remove files from the recovery environment, or reinstall macOS, or have someone to help you or Apple support help you.
Note: you shouldn’t have to reinstall macOS if everything goes to plan, but from experience, pasting in voices from mountain lion will cause you to lose speech in macOS Mojave.

With all the disclaimers out-of-the-way, let’s talk about how to actually get voices from mountain lion, lion, snow leopard, or Mavericks, or any other OS.
If you have a Mac with an order OS on it already, it’s pretty easy for you. Do the following:
Step one: press command shift G in the finder, and type,
/~/Library/Speech
And press enter.
Step two: Now, find and copy the voices folder.
Step three: Connect either an external hard drive or flash drive, or use iCloud if your Mac and the software on it supports it, and in your preferred folder or location, press command V to paste the folder.

Depending on how many voices you have installed, this could take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes.
Now, after the folder is finished pasting, go over to your new Mac which you want to put the voices on, and navigate to the same speech folder. Scroll up to find the exact path.
Once in there, paste your voices folder. Finder is going to ask if you want to merge or replace the folder, hit replace. After it finishes copying, restart voiceover. You should have the voices you copied over. If you still can’t get to them, try restarting your computer.

Now, let’s talk about the worst of the worst, what if your computer boots up with no speech?
Well, there are a few easy steps we can take to get your speech back up and running!

Go ahead and login as your current user.
Just remember that you won’t have speech at this point, so press Ctrl option shift D to get to the desktop. Press command shift you to open the utilities folder on your Mac. Either use voiceover gestures and commands to get to the second to last item, or type in terminal to get to the terminal app.
Press command oh to open it.
Type the following command once the terminal opens.

sudo rm -r /~/Library/Speech

Press enter.
Now type in your pseudo-password (your current users password).
Note: VoiceOver will not click at you as you enter the characters.
After you type your password, press enter. In theory you should have speech right away. If you do not, restart voiceover. If you still have no speech, Try restarting your computer.
Still no speech? Oh, looks like we got a problem… But hold on, don’t worry just yet.

Now, let’s try removing the file through the recovery.
Note, macOS recovery always has speech.
Shut off your Mac I holding down the power button Till the drives and fans shut off. Press the power button. As soon as you hear the start of chime, hold command are. I would wait about a minute before releasing the keys. Then attempt to turn on voiceover. Voiceover should come on with speech. In the utilities table, go ahead and select Safari. After the help page notes, hit command oh for open file. We’re not gonna open anything, but we’re going to access the speech folder that way.

Once in the open dialogue, navigate to the column view browser, and find system. Press write arrow into system, then scroll down and find library. Press right arrow again to open the library folder. Now find your speech folder, And go into it and delete the voices folder, by pressing command option delete.
Now, go to the Apple menu and click restart, and don’t press any keys. If you did everything correctly, you should be back in the login window with speech.
Still no speech? Make sure you could use target disk mode‘s or SMB file sharing, because you’re going to need to back up your data. after your data is backed up, go back into recovery mode. We’re going to erase the disk, and start with a fresh clean copy of the OS.
Note before continuing: only do this if you absolutely have to! I am not responsible for any data loss or any corrupted hard drives of any kind. All I did was just write the article, you followed the steps. 😊 If there is another way to get speech back but I don’t know of, please leave it in the comments below. There are multiple articles and webpages on how to reinstall macOS and erase your disk using disk utility. I’m not going to list it on here because I don’t want people doing it, when they don’t need to. (Like I said before, I’m not responsible for any data loss)
. If you’re still having trouble, find the Apple support accesibility number. They would be more than glad to help you.

I do want to say that it is unlikely you will have to erase your drive, or have anything to do with recovery. I have done this several times. I only had to do it that one time when pasting mountain lions voices into macOS Mojave.

I hope you have enjoyed this article, and when everything goes to plan, it’s amazing having these older voices on the Mac.

Now, I have a question for you guys.
Is there anyway to get these older speech voices on the iPhone, whether it means jailbreaking, or being able to do it on certain iPhones? I do know that I had an iPhone 4s, and when I restored from a backup of that phone on a device with iOS 13 on it, I managed to get all of the old iOS 9 Siri voices in iOS 12, in the language Roeder, only because I have set it up that way in iOS 9. if there is a way to decrypt backups and set specific speech voices as either activities, or language options, or any other way to do it, please let me know. My favorite voice Hass to be the jill voice from macOS mountain lion. My second favorite would have to be Samantha compact from the same OS as well. If there’s any way to get these voices on the iPhone or any other Apple devices besides the Mac, please let me know.
I also just thought of something. Since I was able to get these voices because I restored from a back up from an older device, I am going to try to restore my iPhone 14 pro from a back up of my iPhone 4 I have. I’m honestly curious to see if that would even work. I have no idea, but the device I used it on was a 5S with the iOS 9 voices, so it shouldn’t be a problem of 32 or 64 bit processors I don’t think. It is worth a shot. Worse comes to worst I can just restore from a backup from a few days ago or whenever my phone last backed up.
Thank you for reading, and can’t wait to hear your feedback and your comments!

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Comments

By golddy on Friday, February 24, 2023 - 03:29

Are the above instructions also suitable the voices in the macOS Monterey version written over the ones in the Ventura version?
In Ventura , the voice ïoana"for the romanian language has a bad quality and I would like to use the version from the macOS Monterey in Ventura .

The Mounterey version of the voice was good .

By Siobhan on Friday, February 24, 2023 - 03:29

My own feeling aside, the instructions said that this was 32 bit voices meaning that Ventura probably uses 64 bit so I don't think it'd work. I have to say that the podcast i just listened to finally got tom to say Dismiss not dishmiss. I guess Tom sobered up lol.

By golddy on Friday, February 24, 2023 - 03:29

It is very likely that the ones in macOS Monterey are also on 64 bit, but I don't know where they are located.