Personal Voice 2026 upgrade

[Starfia]

It looks like the upgraded Personal Voice feature, announced by Apple in 2025 as coming "later this year," and reported on MacRumors as anticipated in "iOS 19", finally arrived in iOS and macOS 26.4.

Nobody I've found online (even on MacRumors!) seems to have commented on it.

It looks like it's available only on some devices; I have a number of fairly recent iOS devices, but only my M1 Mac and iPad mini (A17 Pro) offer the improved version.

I tried it yesterday, and the difference is indeed noteworthy. With the original version, you reserve a good half-hour and probably have a cup of tea to optimize your voice before recording, and then wait possibly overnight for generation. With the new version, you're done recording in a few minutes, and the voice is available almost instantly (the long-term processing phase being necessary only to "prepare" the voice for use with other iCloud-enabled devices). The results are still distinguishable from a real voice, but a real leap in quality over the original Personal Voice results.

Has anyone else tried it and wants to voice about it?

 

[HouseLannister]

Where are you seeing that this has been updated? I don't see anything in Apple's 26.4 release notes and Apple's own page for Personal Voice just says it requires iOS 17.

Create a Personal Voice on iPhone, iPad, or Mac - Apple Support

With Personal Voice, you can create a synthesized voice that sounds like you, then use it with Live Speech, Read & Speak, VoiceOver, and augmented speech apps.

support.apple.com

 

[Starfia]

Where are you seeing that this has been updated?

I noted the same about the release notes and that support article. (Odder and odder.)

I'm seeing it here: in Settings on iOS, or System Settings on Mac: after choosing "Accessibility > Personal Voice > Create a Personal Voice", the instructions which previously began with "read 150 phrases aloud…" now begin with "read 10 phrases aloud…" on those devices which support the new version.