Siri voices delete themselves every twenty-four hours

Hello,

Before I begin, I request that you check this post all the way through. I often find that I can give an issue, provide the solutions I have already tried, and then get advised to do the solutions I have tried, again.

Ever since MacOS Sonoma 14.1 (Not 14.0, this didn't exist then,) Siri voices have been deleting themselves approximately every twenty-four hours.

Let me provide some context. I am a user of VoiceOver, and I work in multiple languages, studying German and beginners' Russian at university and occasionally reading text in Spanish, as I used to study that too.

I have been using Siri voices in German and Russian since I got this mac in May of this year, but since MacOS 14.1, there will come a point the next day where the voices I installed will be gone. I might go to read something in Russian or in German and, in the best case, it will use the default voice (I.E. Anna in German and Milena in Russian. In the worst case, both switch to my default English voice, Daniel in this case.

At first, this was most commonly happening when I plugged my mac in, a few hours later. However, it is only recently that I have noticed that the voices have disappeared roughly twenty-four hours after I installed them.


Solutions I have tried include:

• Making sure that the system voices are installed (Yes, I seem to have to install separate instances. The Siri voices for VoiceOver take almost 400MB each, but the system voices take 40-50MB.

• Set Siri voices as default from the root user, so that they are default in the log in window and so on (Don't worry, I disable the root user afterwards.)

• Shutting the mac down before plugging in to charge. If I did this, when the mac started back up, the Siri voices would be there, but then they might delete themselves shortly after. Also, on one occasion that I tried this, on next boot up the notification centre completely stopped working, not showing in the menu bar or activity monitor. Thankfully, a system update fixed this.

• Reinstalling the system: This actually was done to try and fix Notification Centre, but I thought I would add it here too.

I would test this on another user account, but friends of mine have been having the same problem.

I have reported this to Apple through Feedback Assistant, but I am unsure if it has been seen to.


If there's anything else I can try, please let me know. In particular, if there happens to be a way to get VoiceOVer to use these smaller Siri voices used by the rest of the system, that would be amazing to know. If not, it would be fantastic to know exactly where the voices are stored. At this point, I have used well over 10GB of bandwidth and also bytes written to my hard drive, just reinstalling Siri voices that delete themselves.


Many thanks in advance for any assistance in this matter.

Tobias

PS, although I have tagged and mentioned my mac for this post, it is worth noting that this issue happens in iOS 17 and WatchOS 10, too, with the issue unsolved since. I will also say that I have tried waiting a few days to see if the Siri voices might come back on their own, but have had no luck with that.

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 14.3

Posted on Dec 13, 2023 11:55 PM

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Posted on Dec 29, 2023 5:12 AM

I am having a similar issue in IOS 17.2.1 - each day my siri voice resets to the default American voice (4). I have for years preferred the Irish voice 2 and prior to updating to 17.2.1, it never required attention or reset. Now I have to daily change the Siri voice back to my preference. I have tried rebooting my iPhone 12 and that has not solved the problem. It is an annoyance. By the way, the Irish voice 2 is already downloaded and installed, but each day when I ask Siri for my update the American voice 4 speaks back to me.

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Dec 29, 2023 5:12 AM in response to t_h_2473

I am having a similar issue in IOS 17.2.1 - each day my siri voice resets to the default American voice (4). I have for years preferred the Irish voice 2 and prior to updating to 17.2.1, it never required attention or reset. Now I have to daily change the Siri voice back to my preference. I have tried rebooting my iPhone 12 and that has not solved the problem. It is an annoyance. By the way, the Irish voice 2 is already downloaded and installed, but each day when I ask Siri for my update the American voice 4 speaks back to me.

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Jan 12, 2024 6:25 AM in response to Hurls55

After contacting Apple Support (my AirPods are new and under warranty) they seem to have helped me solve my problem. They had me do the following:

(1) On my iPhone, go to Settings > General> Language & Region. Select English.

(2) Go to iPhone Settings > Siri & Search. Please disable 'Press Side Button for Siri' and enable back.

(3) In the same place, turn off 'Listen Off' option and then turn On again.

At this point Siri goes back to American 4 voice.

(4) I selected my preferred language (Irish 2)

It has been three days since that and the Siri voice has remained on my selected Siri voice. Hoping that will continue. Hope that helps you all.


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Jan 11, 2024 5:52 PM in response to t_h_2473

I too am having the same issue. I use British 2 and some days it will stay that way. All of a sudden, my AirPods Pro or Max, doesn't matter which, will respond with the American voice. It will change on my iPhone randomly too, normally 24 hours after. I have tried several times to restart my phone and re-downloading British 2 to no avail. Not sure what else to do here. Frustrating.

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Jan 15, 2024 6:01 PM in response to Hurls55

Sadly two days ago, the Siri voice reset to American again. After contacting Apple Support, they told me the only thing that might help is to back up my iPhone into iCloud, erase all settings and then sign in again and download the backup. I did all this. It took me almost a full day of reinstalling apps that had been originally downloaded using an old iTunes Apple ID (very painful). Then signing back into those apps was gruellingly tedious. I have not lost the Siri voice again since, but I have a suspicion that when I use my AirPods again, the voice will change back.

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Siri voices delete themselves every twenty-four hours

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