Anthropic adds Opus and Sonnet to Claude voice mode

Anthropic is giving Claude’s voice mode a major upgrade, allowing paid users to run spoken conversations on its more powerful Opus and Sonnet models for the first time. Until now, every voice request was routed through Haiku 4.5, Claude’s smaller and faster model.

The upgrade will make voice mode more suitable for handling difficult tasks and is just weeks after OpenAI’s release of their own conversational platform upgrade called GPT-Live. Claude voice finally moves beyond Haiku Voice mode has been part of Claude since last year, letting people speak to the chatbot rather than type. The catch, as Engadget noted, was that Anthropic pushed those spoken requests through Haiku, its smallest and fastest model, to keep response times low.

That trade worked for quick questions and fell apart on anything harder. The new release lets users pick Opus or Sonnet instead. Anthropic told TechCrunch that voice now defaults to whichever model the user last used in text chat, running its fastest variant so the exchange still flows.

A model picker inside the interface lets users swap between Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus without leaving the conversation, per 9to5Mac. TestingCatalog, which spotted the feature under a flag before the announcement, reported that the picker had sat inside voice mode for roughly three weeks as a cosmetic control, with every session still routed to Claude Haiku 4.5 regardless of the choice.

Selecting Opus or Sonnet only began changing the actual model this week. App connectors make voice useful for work tasks The upgrade also opens voice mode to Claude’s app connectors. TechCrunch reported that the assistant can now reach into Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, Canva, and Notion, so a spoken request can move a meeting, draft an email, or spin up a Notion document.

Engadget confirmed voice can pull context from connected apps once a user grants permission. Anthropic framed the tasks this unlocks as longer, messier ones: rehearsing a client pitch, getting feedback on