Apple's VoiceOver allows blind or visually impaired people to use their iPhone without having to look at it. It is a great feature and helps countless people around the world.
If you want to switch up your VoiceOver to give it a brand new voice, with tweaks and adjustments, you've come to the right place. You can actually change many voice settings for VoiceOver, including the voice itself, the verbosity, the pitch, the speaking rate, and the loudness.
Here's how you can change your VoiceOver settings to give yourself a new voice to use your iPhone with.
How to Change VoiceOver's Voice
You may not know this yet, but you can choose from multiple different voices to use the VoiceOver feature with. If you're tired of listening to the same voice repeatedly, you can always switch whenever you want to.
For English, there are different voices present according to region. iOS 15 offers voices from the UK, Australia, India, Ireland, South Africa, and the US, so you've got a wide range to choose from. You may need to download the voice before you can use it.
Follow these steps to download and change the voice for this feature:
- Open Settings and select Accessibility. Tap on VoiceOver.
- Choose Speech and then Voice.
- You will see a list of options under different subheadings for voices sorted according to region. You can just tap on them to sample a few voices and find out which one you like the most. Some voices are pre-existent, while others need to be downloaded. You will need a cellular connection to download a particular voice.
How to Change VoiceOver's Verbosity
Are you a chatty person? Your virtual VoiceOver assistant can be. You can increase the verbosity of VoiceOver from your Settings. How cool is that?
The verbosity feature allows you to customize punctuation settings, spoken hints and notifications, sounds for actions, voiced emojis, and much more.
Follow these steps to play around with your verbosity settings on iPhone:
- Open Settings and select Accessibility. Tap on VoiceOver.
- Select Verbosity.
- You will see options like Punctuation, Speak Hints, Speak Notifications, Actions, and many more. Choose the option you'd like to alter.
You can switch the toggle for Speak Hints and Always Speak Notifications on and off. You can also select Actions and choose to Play Sound or Change Pitch for your actions. The options are endless. It's an excellent way to switch up your VoiceOver feature and make it more fun and convenient.
How to Change VoiceOver's Pitch
Is VoiceOver too high pitched? Too low pitched? Or do you just want some variation in the voice? Apple has a fix. You can adjust the pitch of VoiceOver in the settings.
Increasing or decreasing the VoiceOver pitch is quite an easy task. You can do it whenever you like to adjust the pitch according to your surroundings.
Here's how you can adjust VoiceOver pitch:
- Open Settings and select Accessibility. Tap on VoiceOver.
- Go to Speech.
- Turn on the toggle for Pitch Change.
- Tap on the scale for Pitch. It will be at 50% by default. If VoiceOver is not on, drag the slider left or right to increase or decrease the pitch. If VoiceOver is turned on, you need to double-tap anywhere on the screen (where a command is not present) and drag your finger up or down to increase or decrease the pitch. You can also double-tap and swipe left and right to do the same.
If you want to adjust the volume for VoiceOver, you can do so with the volume buttons on your iPhone.
How to Change VoiceOver's Speaking Rate
You may want to change the VoiceOver speaking rate for several reasons. Perhaps the voice is too fast for you to understand, especially if you're not fluent in the language it's set to. Or it may be so slow to be quite time-consuming. In either case, follow these steps to adjust the speaking rate:
- Open Settings and select Accessibility.
- The scale for the Speaking Rate is in the middle of the screen. The turtle on the left depicts a decrease in rate, while the rabbit on the right depicts an increase.
- Drag the slider to adjust the speaking rate. If VoiceOver is turned on, tap anywhere on the screen (where a command is not present) and drag your finger up and down to increase or decrease the speaking rate. You can also double-tap and swipe left and right to do the same.
Read More: Top Apps to Help the Blind and Visually Impaired Navigate Better
A Brand New VoiceOver With Just a Few Tweaks
There are many VoiceOver settings available for you to customize. You can adjust the voice, pitch, loudness, verbosity, speaking rate, and much more in the Settings app.
The steps to do so are very simple, and you can make changes to your VoiceOver whenever you need it.