An AI voice assistant in Norwegian on iPhone

The Norwegian voice

Norwegian is spoken with the Danish voice, since written Norwegian and Danish are close enough for it to read Norwegian well.

The download

Norwegian uses the pack of about 400 MB that holds the Danish voice and 25 other languages. It downloads after you unlock voice, together with a pack of about 345 MB for English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, and both finish in the background. You can remove the pack you do not need under Settings, then Voice.

Setting it up

Start a voice conversation with the waveform button in the message field. The Spoken language list in the Voice section of Settings does not include Norwegian yet, but with it on Automatic, Orvena listens in Norwegian once it has replied in Norwegian in that conversation. So start the conversation by typing in Norwegian, then switch to voice.

The first time you use a language, iOS downloads its on-device speech recognition model, so the "Getting ready…" screen stays up a little longer that once. Orvena's language picker only offers languages that it can both hear and speak.

Answers in Norwegian

Orvena's own model replies in the language you write or speak, message by message, so you can switch mid-conversation.

Apple Intelligence also supports Norwegian, so on iOS 27 Orvena can answer with Apple's on-device model as well.

Siri and Norwegian

Siri supports Norwegian, but Orvena's Siri phrases are not available in Norwegian yet. With Siri set to English, say "Ask Orvena" to hand it a question or "Talk to Orvena" to start a voice conversation.

What you can ask

• Move my 3 pm meeting to tomorrow.
• What is the weather this weekend?
• Remind me to call the dentist tomorrow at 9.
• Find a pharmacy near me.
• How did I sleep last night?

Orvena shows what it did for each request, and anything consequential asks you first.

What stays on the iPhone

The voice is generated on the iPhone, and speech recognition runs on the device. With Orvena's own model, what you say and its answer stay on the phone; you choose whether a request goes to a cloud model. Live voice with your own OpenAI key is the one exception: it sends your audio to OpenAI, and it asks first.

Common questions

Is the Norwegian voice free?

Voice conversations are part of Premium Unlock, a one-time purchase with no subscription. Typed chat in Norwegian is free.

Does the Norwegian voice assistant work offline?

Yes, once it is set up. With Orvena's own model and the voice pack downloaded, listening, answering and speaking all run on the iPhone. The first use of a language downloads Apple's recognition model for it.

Is the Orvena app in Norwegian?

Not yet. Its menus are not available in Norwegian, but Orvena understands, writes and speaks Norwegian.

Sources

• Apple Support: How to get the next generation of Apple Intelligence