What to know
- You can use your Personal Voice as one of the voices for VoiceOver and Spoken Content on iOS 18.
- Both accessibility features will now have the option to select one of your created voices.
- Create a new Personal Voice from Settings > Accessibility > Personal Voice > Create a Personal Voice.
- Use created voices for ‘VoiceOver’ and ‘Spoken Content’ from Settings > Accessibility.
Apple devices give users the unique ability to record voices and create a synthesized version of them to communicate with others. Known as Personal Voice, the feature was first introduced last year on iOS 17.
This year, iOS 18 has extended support for Personal Voice to ‘VoiceOver’ and ‘Spoken Content’ – accessibility features that let you hear about the items on screen and selected text respectively.
This means that instead of using pre-set voices, you can now use a created voice to hear whenever something is being spoken aloud using these features.
If you haven’t created a Personal Voice yet, you can do so from the ‘Settings app > Accessibility > Personal Voice > Create a Personal Voice’. You can also do this on an iPad or a Mac and have it sync to your iPhone via iCloud.
Once you’ve created a synthesized version of your voice, the same will be available for you to choose from for VoiceOver and Spoken Content settings, both of which are accessible from the ‘Accessibility’ option in the Settings app.
Using your personal voice for VoiceOver and Spoken Content can be quite fun. Of course, it’s not just your own voice that you can use. You could always record the voice of your partner or a family member and use their voice for the two accessibility features.
Personal Voice works especially delightfully for ‘Spoken Content’ where you can highlight text and have it spoken aloud in that voice. Sure, you wouldn’t be able to use it to listen to e-books (as an alternative to getting the audiobook). The voice just won’t be natural enough for it. With enhancements in technology, perhaps someday you could. You might be able to use Personal Voice as Siri’s voice some day. Maybe next year.
