Workout Voice Feedback missing in Polish language after watchOS 27 update on Apple Watch Ultra 2
After updating my Apple Watch Ultra 2 to watchOS 27, the Workout Voice Feedback (Odpowiedzi głosowe) in the Polish language has completely stopped working. The watch remains silent during workouts, even though the feature is explicitly turned on in Settings -> Workout -> Voice Feedback.
This issue seems to be a software regression related to the new audio routing architecture and its dependency on the Siri/Apple Intelligence backend. Since Siri is not natively supported in Polish on watchOS, the workout text-to-speech engine crashes or fails to fetch the local language packs, resulting in absolute silence instead of voice prompts (distance, pace, splits).
The hardware is fully functional: if I switch the entire system language to English (while keeping the region as Poland), the voice feedback immediately starts working flawlessly in English. However, switching back to Polish causes the feature to break again. My older Apple Watch Series 7 running watchOS 26.6 handles this feature perfectly under identical settings, proving it is a specific watchOS 27 regression on newer hardware.
Steps to Reproduce:
- Set Apple Watch Ultra 2 system language to Polish.
- Ensure "Voice Feedback" (Odpowiedzi głosowe) is enabled under Workout settings.
- Ensure the watch is connected to Wi-Fi and charged overnight to download any pending speech assets.
- Start any outdoor workout (e.g., Outdoor Run or Outdoor Walk).
- No audio cues or metrics are spoken by the watch through the built-in speaker or connected Bluetooth headphones.
Expected Result:
The Apple Watch should announce workout metrics (e.g., pace, distance splits) in Polish using the local text-to-speech voice (Zosia), just like it did in previous watchOS versions.
Actual Result:
Complete silence during the workout. The system fails to trigger the Polish voice feedback entirely.
It is obvious regression on newer hardware!!!
