Apple has spent years giving you zero control over how Siri sounds, but that changes now.
With the latest update rolling out to supported iPhones, you can slide Siri’s voice from calm and measured to expressive and fast, tuning it the way you adjust display brightness.
Nobody expected Apple to hand over that knob, and that’s only half of what just got quietly dropped into the update.
Dictation finally works the way voice input should have worked years ago. Speak naturally into any text field and the system now handles capitalization, punctuation, and formatting on its own, in real time, without you correcting anything afterward.
The voice customization works through a new settings panel with two sliders: one for expressiveness, one for pace.
Turn the expressiveness slider up, and Siri becomes more energetic. Slow the pace slider down and responses come at a more relaxed speed.
The difference is noticeable right away. Two people could choose very different settings and end up with Siri sounding noticeably different on each phone.
Both features, the expressive voice options and the improved dictation engine, require at least 12GB of RAM.
That means devices below that threshold won’t see the voice customization panel or the upgraded dictation behavior, even if they already support Apple Intelligence in some form.
Right now, the only available voice option is American English, with more expected before the public release.
