For macOS 27 Golden Gate, Apple appears to be working on a new immersive interface for choosing Siri AI’s voice, based on the results of the latest beta.
Woozad Forum member “mactracker” shared what they call a hidden “voicepad” in macOS 27 beta 4, released on Monday. When enabled, the interface replaces the System Settings menu for Siri’s voice options with a near-black canvas, with the currently selected voice marked by a colored dot.
Pressing, holding, and moving the pad with your pointer brings the interface to life, causing different colors to transition across the view as more and more dots appear and the voice modulates according to different characteristics. Each point emerges from the ether like a star revealed in a hidden constellation.
The visuals even react to cursor movement via spatial audio, so as the pointer approaches a new voice on the pad, the sound is clearer and more present, while voices further away become distant and ambient. Meanwhile, a spatial mixer tracks the distance, angle and speed of the pointer, which adjusts volume, reverb, occlusion and filtering of vocal and background audio layers as you move.
The pad features 13 voice slots in a loose grid, suggesting that Apple may be gearing up to support up to 13 custom voices for Siri AI. You can see the UI in action in the video embedded below.
Currently, the latest macOS 27 beta does not include the required voice models, so it reverts to the two custom voices available. However, a related file found in the beta describes the expected 13 American English voices by gender, age, and character, ranging from a soft-spoken young female voice to a deep adult male voice and two older voices.
If the interface makes the final version of macOS 27, it would be a big step forward from the current situation. As of current beta versions, American is the only voice option for Siri AI, whose expressiveness and rhythm can only be adjusted via sliders.
In this context, the interface likely serves as an onboarding experience for choosing Siri’s underlying voice, with the existing switcher and its rhythm and expressiveness controls being used to further adjust the voice after selection. Although the interface remains unfinished, it would already be localized in 44 languages. It also shares the same Siri setup framework with iOS 27, so we may see it on iPhone and iPad as well.
Unlike the hidden Siri popover we covered earlier this week, there’s no easy way for beta testers to enable this feature flag, as it requires disabling System Integrity Protection (SIP) and replacing the internal code with a debugger.
The new, more advanced Siri AI, supported by great language models, will arrive in supported regions with the release of iOS 27, macOS 27 and other Apple software updates in September.
