Month: October 2026

For years, Voicemod has given people a way to change their voices online, which they’ve done for any number of benign reasons — for game players with feminine-pitched voices to avoid harassment, for those with damaged vocal cords to simulate their former voices, for anonymity or even just for fun. Now the company has a new product to bring its voice-changing tech on the go in a physical device that magnetically clips on the back of phones.

The Voicemod Key Pocket, available to preorder now for $130, is a small soundboard about the size of a magnetic battery and serves as a controller interface for the company’s voice-changing apps. The half-dozen buttons on the back of the device can be used to switch between voices or audio effects while streaming or playing games, while the wheel adjusts volume of the projected voice. 

The Key Pocket works in tandem with the Voicemod app, but all voice processing is done locally and in real time separate from games and streaming apps in order to maximize privacy as well as performance, according to a Voicemod statement. The Voicemod app provides access to over 200 original voices made by the company, over 76,000 voices made by the service’s community and over 800,000 sounds and memes made by users. 

The Key Pocket is a versatile gizmo, with an LED wheel at the top-left corner for toggling voices and checking sound setup, while programmable trigger buttons enable swapping between voices and soundboard playback. The device supports wired and Bluetooth wireless headsets, has USB passthrough charging and clips securely to the back of phones with MagSafe-compatible magnets. 

Beyond phones, the Key Pocket works on tablets and consoles, including PS4 and PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2 and the Meta Quest 2, 3 and 3S headsets. It can plug into USB-C, wired 3.5mm ports or connect via Bluetooth.

There are plenty of reasons folks might want to change their voice, from goofing off with friends to avoiding harassment when gaming online — a sad reality for gamers with feminine voices. It’s also an accessibility boon for people who have health conditions or other circumstances leading them to want to change their vocal timbre and pitch.

These days, changing voices can be cause for concern, especially with artificial-intelligence scams spoofing the voices of loved ones to extort money. But when I sat down at Mobile World Congress 2026 earlier this year to chat with Voicemod’s Daniel Pearson, vice president of marketing, and Alex Bordanova, chief product and technology officer, they explained how it aligned with the ethos of the company. The Key Pocket is the result of years of Voicemod’s work to support the idea that one’s online voice is as much an expression of identity as their visual look.

“Everyone has their digital visual appearance where they tweak their cosmetics and skins, but when it comes to voice, it’s kind of been left out, right? It’s this missing half of digital identity,” said Pearson. 

As voice-changing tech makes its way into Fortnite, Arc Raiders, Marvel Rivals and other spaces for online third spaces, people are opening up to the idea that their personal expression isn’t just limited to how they’re seen, but also how they’re heard — or as Pearson calls it, their “sonic identity.”

Voicemod

When voice becomes a way to express identity

In our earlier chat, Pearson and Bordanova laid out what Voicemod meant to its community, with the latter describing one memorable story from last October’s TwitchCon 2025. A woman approached him explaining that she was a streamer who lost her voice for about six months but was able to make up for it with Voicemod’s tech.

“She used an AI voice, because that was enough to turn something audible out of just very nuanced sounds that she could project,” Bordanova said. 

It spurred discussion about ways the Voicemod team might preserve the community’s voices — a vault, say, to future-proof their voices in the event that health or injury might limit their speaking. 

The Voicemod creators don’t just see its tech as just to alter voices for fun or privacy — they see it as an expression machine, one that reflects who you are online. That comes in the form of a voice tweaked to a desired pitch and timbre, but also more abstract communication, like a soundboard. Yes, the signature toy of radio shock jocks from yesteryear is an aspect of expression, too, especially among a community where sounds take on specific meanings.

“It’s giving you the capacity to react and expand by giving extra context that you and your friends understand, but the normies don’t,” said Pearson.

Voicemod’s team has been encouraged by the increasing availability of voice-changing tech in games. Around a year ago, Arc Raiders launched its voice changer in beta but only offered ten voices at launch, and Voicemod offered their own tech to expand those options. 

“[Gamers] are social beings, they don’t want to have the default skin. They want to have their own skin customized,” Pearson said. “If the game just gives you 5-10 skins, you’re gonna want the next one, you want to differentiate yourself.”

The company’s Voicelab enables further voice tweaking with fun effects. One could, if they wanted, change their voice to sound like they were wearing a helmet in a cave inside a volcano — wacky but evocative sonic context placing the person in a specific space and circumstance. It enhances expression and storytelling and uses AI to do it. But not the AI you’re thinking of.

AI has been at the heart of Voicemod — but not generative AI

There’s no denying that technological advancement has enabled voice generation, but Voicemod came long before that. It was founded 14 years ago, using digital sound processing to alter voices, launching first on an iPhone 3GS, Bordanova explained. 

What their tech enabled that traditional DSP could not is changing the timbre of the voice — its tone, color and personality. Using math, Voicemod’s tech could change a vocal signal in ways that would simulate changing the human organs that naturally shape one’s voice, like elongating or shrinking the vocal cords or altering the width of your throat or nose. 

More traditional AI powered Voicemod’s older methods of voice changing, which improved thanks to technological developments. The company’s advantage was to be one of the first to invest heavily in AI’s use in voice changing, Bordanova said. 

“There was something unique, something very special, that would evolve us from being a voice changer to having fun with friends online, into giving real utility for a 24/7 use case,” Bordanova said. 

What he clarifies is that Voicemod’s tech isn’t based on generative AI, unlike the tech behind voice processing tricks like Google’s live translation. Instead, their language models are around 20 megabytes in weight, and take about a week to train. Unlike the immense large language models used in generative AI, Voicemod’s are small enough to fully download on phones and other client-side devices. They can be consulted immediately on device for 42 millisecond latency, rather than need to go to the cloud.

That doesn’t mean they’ll never use LLMs — but the use case they’re envisioning is as a glorified assistant helping people find the right toggles and settings to get the voice they want from existing choices. 

“You can type, I want the voice of SpongeBob and the LLM would pick the right effect and parameters and just create the voice for us,” Bordanova said. 

Voicemod

Expression on the go, through your phone to your digital life

Back in March at MWC 2026, I chatted with Bordanova and Pearson when they brought out a prototype for the Key Pocket, the follow-up to the company’s earlier Voicemod Key, a dongle device that aimed to help change voices for console play. Even in its cruder form, the Key Pocket felt special. 

As even the prototype was MagSafe compatible, I clipped it to the back of my own iPhone 15 Pro Max. Even if the device wasn’t far enough along to be usable with software, I could still simulate how it would feel in action with my phone rotated sideways, as if I had it active while gaming. The row of buttons rested below my fingers, easy to press if I wanted to tweak my voice or trigger vocal or sound effects. The volume wheel was nice and accessible. If I was streaming or chatting with my friends, the Key Pocket would be a nice accessory to have.

While a lot of gaming happens at home on PC and console, mobile gaming is a huge sector. The Key Pocket is a neat tool for gamers who either play on the go or who opt to play on phones for other reasons — possibly because they can’t afford pricey bigger platforms, which have only gotten more expensive since the RAM shortage. Odds are good that the phone in many gamers’ pockets can play the games they want, and the Key Pocket could help with their so-called sonic identity.

Voicemod’s goal goes beyond the Key Pocket to eventually integrate their tech at a system level, so that anyone booting up a computer or phone could use the tens of thousands of voices created by the Voicemod community (along with the filters and sound effects) to modify their aural appearance anywhere on the device. 

“The last frontier is to get rid of the hardware,” Bordanova said.

Expanding Voicemod’s tech across a device’s software and apps would broaden its appeal — imagine not just customizing your voice in games and voice chats with friends, but work Zooms and other calls. Having the same options and interface available everywhere you could use your voice would open up possibilities for folks who’ve never thought about tweaking their voices.

But any mobile gamer will tell you that external controls make a world of difference compared to on-screen digital buttons. Integrating voice tech into the back end of devices is good, but having the Key Pocket soundboard at the touch of your fingers is a far more tactile and responsive set of controls. For streamers and presenters on the go who rely on exact timing, the Key Pocket is a neat solution. Sometimes all you need is an attractively designed gadget to expose folks to new tech possibilities — and in this case, the potential to express themselves online in a way they may not have considered before.

David Lumb

Managing Editor, Mobile

David Lumb is a managing editor for the mobile team, covering mobile and gaming spaces. Before CNET, he covered tech, gaming, and culture for TechRadar, Engadget, Popular Mechanics, NBC Asian America, Increment, Fast Company and others. As a true Californian, he lives for coffee, beaches and burritos.

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