How To Get Back Siri’s Old Voices in iOS 7.1

So the new iOS update dropped on us the other week and despite myriads of improvements not everybody is happy. One of the main gripes that I often gets to hear is that they don’t like the new Siri voice. Even though the new voices or of a higher quality and contain more information some people, for some unknown reason, want the old British Siri

in iOS 7 .1 Seery no has two new voices. Even in the UK we can now choose between male and female voices. So if you are a fan of the old voices this is how you get them back.

Adjusting the Siri Voice Settings

You can adjust Siri using the Siri options found in Settings > General > Siri. Click on Language and choose from the following:

English(Australian).
English (Canada).
English (United Kingdom).
English (United States).
If you miss the old Siri, we find English (Canada) to be more like the old Siri than the new English (United Kingdom) setting. Canadian Siri is not exactly the same as the old British Siri but has a less stuffy mannerism and a similar accent. To our mind using Siri in a different language doesn’t make much difference to its usability.

How To Change Siri’s Gender

You can now choose between Female and Male Siri voices. Before iOS 7.a the English (United States) voice was female and English (United Kingdom) was male. Follow these steps to change the Siri Voice Gender:

Tap Settings > General > Siri.
Tap Voice Gender.
Tap on Male or Female.

 

We find it best to hold down the Home Button and say “Hi, Siri” and ask it a few questions to get a feel for which Siri Accent and Voice Gender we prefer.

How to get the old Siri voice back on an iPhone
If the Canadian version of Siri still isn’t enough like the old Siri for you, and you want to hear the old version of Siri, then you can hear the old British Siri voice in Voice Control. Voice Control was the technology that preceded Siri, and it isn’t as powerful as Siri.

You access Control Control on the iPhone by turning Siri off. Note that this Siri trick only works on the iPhone, not the iPad:

Go to Settings > General > Siri.

Tap on Siri to turn it to Off..

A warning will appear that disabling Siri removes information from Apple Servers. Tap on Turn Off.

Siri will now no longer work, but if you hold down the Home button on the iPhone you will receive the Voice Control interface. This is like Siri and uses the Siri’s old voice. So have a good chat. Voice Control has much less functionality than Siri. Because Voice control it doesn’t tap into Apple servers it isn’t as good at detecting what you’re saying. We find it often tries to call people in our Contacts list, for example.

If you turn Siri back on it will take time for Apple servers to get your personal information back (Siri adjusts to your requests over time). So for a while Siri may not work as well as it did before.