Enhanced Voice reads spelling words from a library of recordings instead of your device’s built-in voice. Each word was recorded on its own, a little slower than a phone reads, with the last sound kept. It’s part of Spelling Stream Pro, it’s off until you turn it on, and your own recordings come first either way.
Your own voice is free, on every plan
Every word in every list has a mic button. Tap it, say the word, and that recording is what your child hears in every test and every game. There’s no limit on how many words you record, and it works on the free plan and on Pro.
A recording beats Enhanced Voice every time. If you’ve recorded a word yourself, the library recording never plays for it, whether Enhanced Voice is on or off. Enhanced Voice only fills in the words you haven’t recorded.
Turn it on
- Open Parent Center and unlock it.
- Tap Voice Settings.
- Under Enhanced Voice, switch it on.
The first time the app can offer it, you also get a one-time page with Turn it on and Leave it off. Either answer can be changed later from the same Voice Settings card. Your child can’t change it; the page is behind the parent lock.
It needs Cloud Sync, signed in. The app downloads the recordings through your account, so it has to know it’s you. If Cloud Sync isn’t set up yet, the card reads Off until Cloud Sync is on and offers a Set up Cloud Sync button. Until then your child hears the device voice.
Hear it first
Under the switch is a row called Hear the difference. It holds six words in pairs, wet and web, bat and bag, write and right, each with a Standard button and an Enhanced button. Standard is your phone’s own voice, spoken live. Enhanced is the recording. Both play through the same speaker, so you hear what your child will hear. If they sound alike to you, leave it off.
Read the badges on a list
Open a list in Parent Center. A word with an Enhanced Voice recording wears a small orange badge at the right of its row. The line under the list title counts them: 12 words · 11 with Enhanced Voice. To hear a word, tap the three dots on its row and choose Listen.
A word with no badge plays in the device voice, unless you’ve recorded it. A word with a badge plays the library recording, unless you’ve recorded it. Your recording wins in both cases.
The badge list ships inside the app. A word added to the library after your version was built still plays in the enhanced voice, but shows no badge until the next app update.
Which words are covered
About ten thousand: the Fry sight words, the high-frequency lists used in early grades, and the common vocabulary of English. Names and local places are the usual gaps.
A word the library doesn’t have goes to a person on our team. If it belongs, it gets recorded and added, and from then on it plays in your app without an update. Until then it plays in the device voice. Anything that shouldn’t be read aloud to a child is left out on purpose.
Words that sound like other words
For a word like “write,” where “right” is the same sound, the recording is the word, a short pause, then the word in a sentence. That version plays in tests and in every game, so your child knows which one is being asked for.
Accent
Two sets were recorded, American and British. Australia, New Zealand and Ireland get the British set. The accent follows the language and region set on the device; there’s no separate switch in the app. On an iPhone or iPad that’s Settings, General, Language & Region. On Android it’s the system language in Settings.
Offline
Recordings for the active list download in the background whenever the device is online: when the app opens, when it comes back to the front, when the connection returns, and when your child starts a test or game. Once a word is on the device it plays with no signal.
If a list is opened with no connection, its words play in the device voice until the next time you’re online. The download then finishes on its own.
Paused on a child’s device
Where the App Store or Google Play hasn’t yet confirmed a child’s age with a parent or legal guardian, Cloud Sync stays off on that device and Enhanced Voice pauses with it. Parent Center shows a red box at the top while that’s the case. The Cloud Sync age page walks through confirming the age on iPhone, iPad and Android. Once confirmed, both come back on the next launch.
What it sends
With Enhanced Voice on, the app sends the words on the active list, plus the accent, to our servers to fetch the matching recordings. Nothing else: no child’s name, no scores, none of your own recordings. A word the library doesn’t have is kept as plain text, with no link to your account or device, until a person decides whether to add it. That record is then deleted either way. The library was recorded ahead of time with Amazon Polly; Amazon receives nothing about you, your child, or your device. The privacy policy has the full wording.
Turn it off
Parent Center, Voice Settings, switch it off. The app stops fetching words. Recordings already on the device stay until you use Delete All Data. Your own recordings are unaffected.