Want to convert text to speech right on your iPhone? Even better, would you like the text-to-speech feature to mimic your own voice? With iOS 17, you can do just that thanks to a new feature called ” personal voice.
This feature allows you to create a sort of replica of your voice, which can then be used to read aloud the text you type on your iPhone.
What is personal vote?
Before we dive into the setup process, let’s understand what Personal Voice is and what it does.
Personal Voice is a new feature introduced in iOS 17. It uses the device’s built-in machine learning capabilities to study and analyze your voice, then build a personalized speech model on your iPhone.
Once this model is generated, you can use it for text-to-speech capabilities, such as reading text, phrases, or sentences aloud on your iPhone.
Create your personal voice on iPhone
To create your unique personal voice, you will need to record 150 sets of random phrases, which should take around 15 minutes. Your iPhone then analyzes these recordings and creates a speech model based on your audio input.
Here are the steps to set it up.
- Go to on your iPhone ‘Ideas’ > ‘Accessibility’.
- Scroll down and tap “personal voice‘ and choose ‘Create a personal voice‘.
- Beat ‘Keep going’enter a name for your personal voice, then tap ‘Keep going’ once again.
- You are now in the sound quality check phase. Tap the ‘Record’ Click the button and read the text. If everything is ok, tap ‘Keep going’ again to continue.
- This is where the actual recording of your voice begins. Tap the ‘Record’ Click the button and start reading the text that is presented to you. Once you’re done reading, you’ll see:Continue to the next sentence‘.
- If you want to re-record a specific phrase, tap “Re-record‘. If you want to know what a specific line sounds like, tap ‘Preview’.
- When you have read all 150 of the 150 sentences, tap ‘Keep going’followed by ‘OK’.
For now you are ready. To speed up speech model generation, lock and charge your phone. The whole process can take a few hours, sometimes even days.
Note: In my case, it lasted around 8 hours with the phone locked and plugged into a charging cable.
How do I know if my personal voice is ready?
When your personal voice is being prepared, you will occasionally receive a notification, especially when your phone is locked and charging.
Once the process is complete, you will receive a notification that the process is complete and your personal voice is ready to use.
Alternatively, you can check the status by navigating to ‘Ideas’ > ‘Accessibility’ > ‘personal voice‘. When complete, the creation date is displayed. Otherwise the progress will be shown as a percentage.
How to use Personal Voice on iPhone
To hear what your personal voice sounds like while narrating, you must first “live speech‘. That’s how it’s done:
- Go to ‘Ideas’ > ‘Accessibility’.
- Scroll down and tap “live speech‘then tap again to turn it on’live speech‘.
- Find them ‘VOICES’ Label and select the custom voice you created earlier.
- Here’s a quick way to use your voice to tell stories Press the power button three times to start Live Speech.
- Enter the phrase or sentence to be spoken and press the button ‘Send’ Button.
FAQ
How long does it take to create a personal voice on an iPhone?
Well, it takes about 15 minutes to record all 150 sentences. Then it takes a few more hours to days, depending on how fast your iPhone can analyze and generate the language model. To speed up the process, it’s best to make sure you lock the phone’s screen and charge it.
Can I delete the created personal voice?
Yes, to delete a created personal voice, just click on it and then tap on the delete button.
Can I access my personal voice on other devices?
Yes, as long as the other devices are signed in with the same iCloud ID. To share, you also need to enable it under Accessibility > Personal Voice > Share Across Devices.
Can Apple access my personal voice?
Personal Voice uses on-device machine learning, powered by the Neural Engine, to analyze and generate your voice model. So the answer is no. Apple does not have access to your personal voice or the data associated with it.
