VoiceOver speaking rate

By Alicia Krage, 5 March, 2026

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

I wanted to post another discussion question here, because I always have a lot of fun with these and hearing different perspectives.

What is your current VoiceOver speaking rate? Was it always that particular rate, or did you work your way up?

I always had mine at 65, but accidentally changed it to 70 percent like 10 minutes ago and actually prefer it. I feel like I can adjust pretty quickly, though I don't think I'll ever be able to crank it up to 100. Maybe 75 at most.

I can't wait to see these answers!

Options

Comments

By Holger Fiallo on Thursday, March 5, 2026 - 00:40

My is at 55. Alicia your number is to high and probably difficult to understand. 50 to slow and the perfect number is 55. Long live cats.

By Alicia Krage on Thursday, March 5, 2026 - 00:42

I actually surprisingly understand it just fine! Maybe because I already listen to audiobooks pretty fast so I'm used to it.

By Singer Girl on Thursday, March 5, 2026 - 00:55

I never put my speaking right past 50% of my brain can’t processing anything faster.

By Brian on Thursday, March 5, 2026 - 01:02

These days I primarily use default Samantha on my iPhone. She is currently at 65%, though I have hacker at 70% before. The rare times I use eloquence on iOS, I crank that up pretty high. Somewhere between 80 and 90. Though to be fair I do not use eloquence on my iPhone very often. I mainly will use that on my laptop, and only when I am dealing with source code. Other times I also have Samantha high premium or high-quality or whatever it's called on my PC laptop. Don't remember exactly what the number is, but it's equivalent to 65 on my iPhone.

By KE8UPE on Thursday, March 5, 2026 - 01:54

Hi,
I'm a huge fan of Eloquence. My favorite voice is Reed & I have him at a speaking rate of 70%, which is perfect for me.

By Ayub on Thursday, March 5, 2026 - 02:17

Me too. I like using Reed, sinse I'm used to hearing it on JAWS. I have it set to 80% and I have the Rate Multiplier set to 115%. I'm the only one that understands what is saying.

By Ayub on Thursday, March 5, 2026 - 02:27

One thing to know about this is that if I use VoiceOver at a faster rate, is that it drains my battery.

By Singer Girl on Thursday, March 5, 2026 - 02:44

The vocalizer voices on the PC or premium high or compact. That’s interesting that there’s somebody on here who has a bad drainage when the speaking rate is faster. Maybe it takes more battery power to make it speak faster? I’m not really sure why that would be. But that’s interesting.

By Jamie Pauls on Thursday, March 5, 2026 - 04:18

When using Alex, I prefer speech rate at about 65%, 70 at the highest. Using the eloquence, reed voice, I like it at about 75%.

By jim pickens on Thursday, March 5, 2026 - 08:30

Technically, 50%, more practically, 900wpm, since espeak has its own rate controls in the app. For reference, that's about equivalent to espeak on nvda with rateboost on and a rate of 75.

By Alicia Krage on Thursday, March 5, 2026 - 13:57

Interesting that someone experiences battery drain when it's at a higher rate. I wonder why that is.

By Chad on Thursday, March 5, 2026 - 21:09

Samantha, 85

By Holger Fiallo on Thursday, March 5, 2026 - 21:13

Watch, iPad and phone 55. Voice Tom. Long live gatas.

By Lielle Ben simon on Friday, March 6, 2026 - 07:59

On my devices, I've set it about 60%.

By InfoRover on Friday, March 6, 2026 - 08:08

I have Daniel advanced at 100%. Whenever I've experimented with eloquence, I've managed to get it to 85 - 90% before I couldn't understand it.
I'm not a massive fan of eloquence though really because I prefer the voice to be somewhat expressive and eloquence gets on my nerves quickly.
This is, of course, a matter of preference.

By Holger Fiallo on Friday, March 6, 2026 - 12:26

In my phone for mail, have Alison, music eva, kindle, Daniel, and message had samantha. Deleted Sam in message because got 2 voices, Sam and Tom. Long live cats.

By Ash Rein on Friday, March 6, 2026 - 13:14

I’m max it out. I need a lot of information very quickly. I don’t have a clue how people can stand using their devices at 55%. That means they’re getting information at a snails pace.

Everybody has a reason for what they do. Even if I’m not always aware of it.

By Alicia Krage on Friday, March 6, 2026 - 15:10

It absolutely amazes me that people can actually understand it at 100 percent. I don't think I'll ever get there.

By Chad on Friday, March 6, 2026 - 15:12

As a teacher of the Visually Impaired, I would sneak in and increase student's rate. I felt it would make them more productive in the long run.

By Holger Fiallo on Friday, March 6, 2026 - 15:17

Glad you were never my teacher. My hearing and ability to listen affect my ability to understand. Unless you did it with my consentthat would be different. Long live cats.

By Ash Rein on Friday, March 6, 2026 - 23:18

It takes time and a little practice. Just a gradual increase over time. There is never a rush. Just a willingness to try and stay in discomfort for a little while.

By emassey on Friday, March 6, 2026 - 23:43

I use Samantha at 100% and have done so for many years, probably since junior high if not earlier. For Eloquence Reed, I can understand it well at 85%. When I’m using eSpeak, mostly on NVDA and on Linux, I set it to 900 words per minute and I can understand it. If I am converting books to audio I would use 600 because it is hard to listen to articles and books at 900. A long time ago I just increased the speech rate gradually over time until it became hard to understand or reached the maximum, and whenever I start using a new TTS I do the same. It seems like eSpeak can be understood the fastest, followed by synthesizers like eloquence and TGSpeechBox (which has been getting better in this regard), followed by natural voices like Vocalizer and Microsoft’s new natural voices.