Up to iOS 18 there were many voices available on device by default including "Nicky" that I use in my app. Somewhere around iOS 18.6 or 26.0 these voices were removed and no longer included in the OS by default. This broke my app that counted on the Nicky voice being available. My only workaround is to direct my users to download the voice again by going to Accessibility > VoiceOver > Speech > Voices and downloading "Nicky". I cannot simply switch to using Samantha (the only voice that is still available by default) because I have heavily customized how IPA pronunciations are tweaked to make Nicky speak Old English correctly. I tried briefly with Samantha but the results were not as good.
I have 2 questions:
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Is there any way for me to include the "Nicky" voice in my app or for me to trigger the download from the app so I don't have to show an error and direct users through the settings app to get the voice?
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Are there any new features with AI voices in iOS 27 that I can use with IPA pronunciations to get them to speak possibly better than the Nicky voice?