From the beginning, Siri has had a female voice, but why does it have to be that way? It's true that the name itself often influences the perceived gender of a device, but if you want, you can change the assistant's voice to male instead of female, or even give it a different tone. This is something that's easier to do with the latest system updates. So, we'll show you how to change Siri's voice on the HomePod and other Apple devices.
Is Siri a woman?
If we were to ask anyone what gender they think Siri is, just by name the vast majority would say female. And it's normal, it really sounds like a woman's name, but the truth is that for Apple she has never had it and a sample of this is the different types of voices that she has used depending on which countries.
Now that the new updates to the iOS, iPadOS, macOS and tvOS operating systems have arrived, the company will give you the option to choose how you want your assistant to sound when you configure it for the first time. Although if you already did it and want to change, you will also be able to do it. Before it was possible, the difference is that now everything will be easier and also possible on all devices.
Finally, as a point of interest, according to one of Siri 's creators , the name was taken from a goddess in Norse mythology who facilitated communication between people and was strongly associated with wisdom. This is something Apple's voice assistant is often used for: to help you answer certain questions you might ask it.
How to change Siri's voice on HomePod
The HomePod and HomePod mini are the only speakers capable of using Apple's voice assistant. So that's where it makes the most sense to be able to choose how you want Siri to sound, whether as a female or male voice.
To change the voice of Siri, the steps to perform are very simple:
- Open the Home app on any of your Apple devices, from iPhone to iPad to Mac
- Locate your HomePod and then go to HomePod Settings
- Next you have to look for the Siri Voice option, tap on it to access
- Now you will see that you can choose between using the Spanish or Mexican variety of the voice and then between two types of voices if you are configuring it from Spain. If you are in other countries and with other languages ​​you will see that the possibilities increase up to four
Done, once you have changed it you will see that when you interact with the HomePod Siri it sounds different.
Change Siri's voice on iPhone or iPad
For iOS or iPadOS devices like the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, changing the Siri voice is also very easy. You just have to do this step by step:
- Open Settings
- Locate the Siri and Search option
- Once you have accessed them, search for Siri Voice
- Select variety and voice
- Done, you got it
As you can see, it is also very easy to change how Siri will sound on these devices where its use makes much more sense, especially if you use other company accessories such as AirPods.
How to change Siri's voice on Mac
On Apple computers, using Siri is not very common for most users. In the first place, because for many of these devices it is necessary to perform a key combination or click on some point on the interface to activate it. There is no active listening option and that makes it faster for many things to do it in a traditional way using the keyboard and mouse.
However, despite all this, you can also change Siri's voice, and using it for some tasks isn't a bad idea at all. If you want to change the voice of Apple's assistant on your Mac , here's what you need to do:
- Open System Preferences. You can do this by launching Spotlight and writing Preferences, when it appears on the screen press enter and you will directly access them. The other option, perhaps easier for many, is to go to the apple icon in the upper left corner and there click on System Preferences
- In the window that opens, locate the Siri icon
- Once inside, if you have not yet activated the use of Siri, you can do so. If it is already active, you will see that options appear to choose the variety of voice as well as the two types available again in the case of users in Spain
- Ready
Now change the Siri voice, later hopefully the wake word
Siri's voice change was already available before, but now it has been enhanced with new voices that sound much more natural and with this option that asks you to choose how you want it to sound when you start a device for the first time and activate the company's assistant.
Even so, despite being an interesting change, it wouldn't be bad at all if Apple also allowed users to change the activation word or command for their assistant. It's true that for these companies, having something fixed helps to better introduce the product to other users and to create and identify the brand. However, it's also true that there are times when having to constantly say "Hey Siri" is more annoying than other shorter and more direct activation words like Alexa or Echo in the case of Amazon speakers.
Hopefully, they'll offer this option in the near future. However, it's unlikely they will, because when the company chose "Hey Siri," one of their goals was to avoid false positives when the assistant was activated by similar-sounding words or phrases.