Improve iPhone Voice
If you use the iPhone’s speech functions a lot, such as reading the screen or Voice Over, you will hear a computer voice. This usually sounds a bit tinny. You can improve this yourself by setting a better audio quality. In some languages ​​(including English, German, French and Italian) it is even possible to choose an extra natural voice, using smart techniques called Neural TTS. How this works and how you can benefit from a better voice can be read in this tip.
Improved voice selection
The feature is well hidden in iOS. You can find the options to improve the sound quality in the accessibility options of the Settings app. This is because people who are visually impaired depend largely on audio control and therefore mainly need the best possible sounding voice. To make reading texts as pleasant as possible, Apple has added an option to improve the sound quality.
To choose an enhanced voice, follow these steps below:
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
- Go to Accessibility > Spoken Content.
- Tap Voices > Dutch.
- Choose from Claire, Xander or Ellen (specially for Belgium). If you haven’t downloaded the voice yet, you need to do this first.
- After downloading, tap the desired name again and choose Claire/Xander/Ellen (Enhanced).
Improved Siri voice
You can also choose between the voices Siri (Voice 1) and Siri (Voice 2) on the screens above. These Siri voices often sound a bit better and more familiar than the voices of the speech functions. The choice you make here is independent of the Siri settings. So you can choose one Siri voice for reading screen texts, while setting the other voice for Siri commands.
In older iOS versions, these voices were called Siri (Male) and Siri (Female), but as Apple increasingly advocates a gender-neutral approach, the voices have been numbered since iOS 14.5.
Delete downloaded votes
You can’t delete the default voices Claire, Xander and Ellen from your device, but you can delete the enhanced version of these voices. You can also delete downloaded voices for speech functions such as VoiceOver if you no longer use them.
To delete downloaded voices:
- Go to Settings > Accessibility > Spoken content.
- Tap Voices > English > Voice.
- Tap Edit at the top right.
- Press the red stop sign to remove the voice from your device.
More tips about voices and speech
We have more tips related to speech functions and voice selection. Check these out too!
- Here’s how to customize the navigation voice in Apple Maps
- Use Voice Control on iPhone, iPad, and Mac
- Have text read aloud on your iPhone screen
- Sending voice messages with Siri: here’s how
- Is Siri Misspelling Your Name? Here’s How to Teach Siri to Pronounce Contact Names
Check out our complete iPhone tips overview. With hundreds of iPhone tips, we discuss almost every setting and possibility!
