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It’s no secret that Siri isn’t always perfect. Whether the voice assistant struggles to understand what we are saying or misinterprets our commands, these mistakes often result in an awkward conversation rather than the desired output.
Another inconvenience of Siri is that of reading messages out loud. It is a frustrating experience since you may not be ready for other people around you to hear a message from anyone, including your favorite significant other. Fortunately, there is a workaround to mitigate this issue. This article will talk about how to prevent Siri from reading a message on AirPods and how to enable/disable speech-to-text notifications on iPhones running iOS 11+.
If you have an Apple phone and Airpods, you’re probably aware of a potentially embarrassing situation: when you’re listening to something on your Airpods, and a text message comes in, Siri is quite happy to read the message out loud. Here’s how to turn that off.
1) Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2) Scroll down the list of options and tap the ‘Accessibility’ button.
3) Tap ‘Spoken Content.’
4) In the middle of the screen, toggle off the ‘Speak Screen.’ You’ll know it’s off when it turns gray.
What Is Siri?
Siri is a personal assistant—much like Alexa or Google Assistant—built into your iPhone. The name “Siri” is an acronym for Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface; which hints at its primary function: listening to you and understanding what you’re saying.
Siri does more than just understand your questions, though. It’s capable of actually responding to your requests. You can say, “Hey Siri, what’s the weather like?” and your assistant will answer you with the current forecast.
It can also complete tasks on your behalf. This means that you can tell Siri to send a message or make a call to someone in your contacts list (as long as you have an active internet connection). These kinds of commands let you do things easily without going through the steps manually.
How To Stop All Siri Notifications?
You can stop all notifications from Siri and search by going to Settings > Notifications > Siri & Search and turning off Listen for “Hey Siri” or Press Home for Siri.
Is My Data Safe If Siri Can Read My Messages?
Imagine you’re sitting at your desk, doing some work. You get a text message from your best friend, and it reads: “I’m going to the bar later.”
Watch out! Siri is listening: “I’m going to the bar later.”
You look up at your phone, and you see that Siri has just read the message out loud—and it didn’t prompt you first. Your boss is literally right there. If he heard what Siri said, you’re screwed.
Did you know that Siri could do this? Probably not. And now you’re in a bad situation. You have to either play it cool and act like your phone just randomly read a message out loud or explain why Siri just read a text message about drinking in front of your boss. Either way, it’s not great for you.
The point is that your phone can share information when you don’t want it to; that’s not good for your privacy or security. When we give our phones access to personal information like text messages, we expect they’ll keep that data safe and secure, rather than let the AI on our phones read our texts aloud without asking us first (or even telling us!).
Is There A Way To Stop Siri From Reading Everything on My Phone?
Good news: yes, there is a way! To stop Siri from reading everything on your phone, you’ll need to adjust the settings on your iPhone. To do this, go to Settings and then to Siri & Search. There, you can disable each app’s ability to interact with Siri.
Can I Control Siri Announce Notifications?
Siri can announce certain notifications for you. This feature is available on iPhone SE, iPad Pro, iPad (5th generation or more), iPad Air 2 and above, and iPad mini 4 or later. To turn on Announce Notifications with Siri:
- Go to Settings > Notifications.
- Tap the app whose notifications you want to have Siri announce. If you don’t see an app, ensure that the app includes notifications.
- Turn on Announce with Siri.
Notification Center displays your notifications until you open them or dismiss them. If an app has unread notifications, its icon appears in the Notification Center with a red badge indicating the number of unread notifications.
What Else Can Siri Do To Make My Life Easier?
Well, for starters, you can use Siri to search for photo albums. That way, you never have to scroll through your feed again. Instead of scrolling through a bunch of photos of your friend’s baby (who is probably just going to turn out to be a serial killer), you can use Siri to search for the album that has the pictures from your cousin’s wedding; that way, it’ll be easier to find those pictures from last month when you were all wasted and decided to go swimming in the hotel fountain.
You can also use Siri as a personal valet. You probably don’t want to pay someone so that they can open doors for you and carry your bags. But with Siri, you don’t have to! Just say, “Siri, hold my door,” and Siri will open your smart door for you! It’s like having Jeeves around 24/7 and never worrying about tipping him or anything else!
Conclusion
The preference to allow your iPhone or Macbook to read out loud messages when they are received while connected to Airpods can be turned off from the Bluetooth section of settings on the iPhone. When you turn it on, Airpods play a tone and allow you to decide whether you want the phone to read them out or not. Thankfully, Airpods do not yet support the privacy option to relay only what Siri is saying and not any other messages coming through your device. Hopefully, this does not become a feature as it could be too easy for a stranger to keep track of what is going on in your life if they are around you.
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