iOS 27 Beta 4’s New Siri Voices Reach Just Three iPhones

Apple’s fourth iOS 27 developer beta gives Siri seven new voices and six new accents, but only two voices work yet, and only three iPhones qualify for any of it. Apple shipped the build on July 20, alongside a second public beta, with the finished iOS 27 due in September.

One of those six new accents is Irish. Apple’s own announcement says the smarter Siri, the one built to actually understand context, will not reach the European Union, Ireland included, when the new operating system ships to the public.

Two of Seven New Siri Voices Actually Work

Beta 4 rebuilds the Siri voice picker. On phones without full customization support, it now shows a proper list of voices and accents to browse. On phones that do support the deeper controls, extra voice options appear too, each flagged as coming soon.

Only two of the seven voices currently have working pace and expressivity sliders, according to testing by iThinkDiff’s rundown of beta 4’s Siri changes. The other five legacy voices still display those sliders grayed out. And full custom voice selection, sliders included, only functions on three phones: iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone Air.

Apple has not said when the remaining five voices unlock, or when older-but-supported iPhones get the sliders at all. One outlet covering the beta, SquaredTech, put it plainly: voice identity feels more personal than, say, a camera codec, and restricting it risks turning a personalization feature into another upgrade nudge. That is a sharper read of the same hardware split that gates Siri AI behind hardware limits for older phones running the same iOS 27 update.

Why Does an Irish Siri Voice Ship Without an Irish Siri Brain?

Apple added South African, Irish, Indian, British, Australian and American accent options to Siri in this beta cycle. But Apple’s own newsroom, announcing Siri AI in June, states plainly that the assistant will not work everywhere those accents live.

Apple’s announcement reads that Siri AI will not be available initially in the EU in iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS, though Mac and Vision Pro owners in the bloc get it if their language is supported. Ireland is an EU member state, so an iPhone user there can pick an Irish-accented Siri voice while the smarter, context-aware Siri underneath stays switched off. China faces a separate hold, with Apple working through local rules before Siri AI activates there at all.

The site’s own coverage of EU regulators’ demands to open AI assistants to outside developers helps explain why Brussels and Cupertino keep missing each other’s timelines on this exact feature. Apple has not given a date for closing the gap.

Beta 4 Clears a Backlog of Interface Bugs

Away from Siri, beta 4 spends most of its energy on cleanup. Testers and outlets tracking the build point to a short list of fixes:

• Spotlight search no longer shows grayed-out app icons that broke the search experience in earlier builds.
• Control Center and Notification Center glitches from prior betas are gone, smoothing a display bug that had persisted across builds.
• The depth effect bug that beta 3 introduced is fixed, according to 9to5Mac’s beta 4 roundup.
• A wallpaper cutout in Notification Center, added in the previous beta, was quietly removed, suggesting it was not ready.

Beta 4 also adds a splash screen explaining the Siri interface when it is invoked from the Dynamic Island, plus an adaptive mode slider for AirPods Pro in Control Center. That last one lines up with the site’s earlier look at how custom EQ arrived for AirPods with early firmware bugs of its own.

Buried in the same build, testers found code strings referencing an iPhone with two separate batteries, including status text reading, “The batteries in this iPhone are performing as expected.” Nothing is official, but it lines up with existing reports of a foldable iPhone that would need a split power design to fit around its hinge, a hardware reveal that would land months after this software groundwork.

Find My, Apple Watch and Health Data Get a Refresh

Beyond Siri and bug fixes, beta 4 touches four everyday tools testers actually use daily.

• Find My gets updated icons and more flexible location sharing for tracking devices and collaborating with others.
• Apple Watch GPS syncs more smoothly with iPhone, tightening location sharing between the two devices.
• Health data sharing gets a cleaner interface for managing what sensitive information gets shared and with whom.
• Control Center now keeps a persistent network and data status display on screen, cutting out menu digging for a quick connection check.

None of these are flashy. Together they read as Apple spending this particular beta cycle on the parts of the phone people touch every hour rather than headline features.

Two Years of Promises Sit Behind This Voice Upgrade

The context for all of this goes back to June 2024, when Apple first promised a transformed Siri capable of understanding personal context and controlling apps on command. That promise has slipped repeatedly since.

1. June 2024: Apple unveils Apple Intelligence and a reimagined Siri at WWDC, initially tied to iOS 18.
2. Early 2025: Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports the LLM-powered Siri overhaul is delayed, with engineering issues pushing pieces of it toward iOS 18.5 and beyond.
3. February 2026: Gurman reports fresh setbacks, including processing lag and accuracy bugs, with features spreading across iOS 26.5 and possibly iOS 27 in September.
4. June 2026: Apple reveals Siri AI at WWDC, built on an architecture reportedly code-named Linwood and incorporating technology from Google’s Gemini team under a project reportedly called Campo.
5. July 2026: iOS 27 beta 4 ships Siri’s voice personalization while the promised context-aware Siri AI remains partial and geographically limited.

The site’s earlier reporting on Siri’s WWDC 2026 platform opening to AI rivals covers how Apple is now letting outside developers plug into Siri, even as the core assistant keeps arriving in pieces. A year and a half after the original 2024 reveal, testers are still finding placeholder sliders marked coming soon.

Public Beta 2 Is Already Out, September Comes Next

Apple’s public rollout has stayed close to its usual rhythm. The first public beta landed July 13. The second followed just a week later, around July 20, alongside developer beta 4, correcting any sense that a second public build was still weeks away.

From here, Apple typically ships a release candidate near early September before the finished operating system goes out to everyone. Forbes has reported the general release is expected to land in September alongside the iPhone 18 Pro, timed to Apple’s annual product event. Apple has not set an exact date for that keynote publicly.

Battery complaints on iPhone 17 Pro, the device carrying the fullest version of the new voice feature, remain the loudest unresolved issue testers have flagged in this build. 9to5Mac’s standard beta advisory already warns users to expect battery life differences on Apple Intelligence-enabled devices running early builds, and Apple has not said whether the iPhone 17 Pro drain is tied to the new voice engine or simply typical beta overhead. Whichever it is, Apple has roughly seven weeks left to fix it before the phones now carrying its most personalized Siri yet reach the public.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I install the iOS 27 public beta right now?

Sign up for free at Apple’s beta software program, then go to Settings, General, Software Update, Beta Updates on a compatible iPhone and select the iOS 27 Public Beta option. No developer account or paid membership is required for the public track, only the free beta enrollment.

Which iPhones get Apple Intelligence and Siri AI at all?

Apple’s own newsroom lists iPhone 16 models or later, plus iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, as the baseline hardware for Apple Intelligence and Siri AI in iOS 27. That is a wider group than the three models getting full custom voice sliders, since voice personalization needs extra processing beyond what basic Apple Intelligence requires.

Why doesn’t Siri AI work in the European Union yet?

Apple has stated Siri AI will not be available initially on iPhone and iPad in the EU, tying to ongoing friction between Apple and EU regulators over opening its platforms to outside developers. Mac and Apple Vision Pro users in the bloc can access it if their device language is supported.

What is Apple’s Campo project?

Campo is the code name Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported for the Gemini-powered Siri chatbot component expected to arrive with iOS 27, built alongside a separate on-device architecture reportedly named Linwood. Apple has not confirmed either name publicly.

Will the five legacy Siri voices ever get pace and expressivity controls?

Apple’s beta labels those sliders as coming soon without a firm date. In past betas, similar placeholder features have typically activated within one or two subsequent developer builds, though Apple has not confirmed that pattern will hold this time.