How to Announce Calls on iPhone
Did you know that your iPhone can announce the calls you receive so that you don’t have to see the phone, or take it out of your pocket to know who’s calling? That’s right, with this feature enabled, Siri will speak the name of the person calling you out loud, so you will know exactly who is calling. And you can even configure Announce Calls so that it’s enabled all the time, only when connected to headphones, or when connected to a car with CarPlay.
As long as you have a semi-new iPhone you’ll have his feature available, sine announce calls has been around since the release of iOS 10 back in 2016. When the announce calls feature is enabled, your iPhone will still play the ringtone like it normally would when you receive a call, but it will quiet down for a few seconds as Siri announces the caller’s name. This could come in handy to know who’s calling you when you’re driving, your phone is in your pocket, if your phone is being charged, or for many accessibility situations too.
If you want to have your iPhone verbally announce who is calling to you, read along and we’ll be covering how to make this change on your device.
How to Have iPhone Announce Calls by Speaking Caller Name
Turning on announcements for phone calls is a pretty simple and straightforward procedure on an iPhone regardless of what iOS version its currently running, here’s how:
- Head over to “Settings” app from the home screen of your iPhone.
- In the settings menu, scroll down and tap on “Phone” to get started.
- Next, tap on “Announce Calls” which is located just above your phone number. However, this may slightly vary depending on the iOS version.
- Now, you have the option to choose between “Always”, “Headphones & Car”, and “Headphones Only” for enabling this feature. Choose according to your preference and you’re set.
There you go, you’ve configured announce calls on your iPhone, and you’re ready to go.
From now on, whenever you get a phone call, Siri will announce the name of the caller so that you don’t have to manually check your phone.
If the person who’s calling is not in your contacts, Siri will read the phone number out loud.
If the number doesn’t show up on the screen or is not recognized, Siri will say “Unknown Caller” instead.
This feature could prove to be extremely useful for many situations, for example when you’re driving. If your car has support for Apple CarPlay, you can choose the “Headphones & Car” option to make sure the announcement is made via the CarPlay head unit.
Another feature that’s similar in comparison would be announcing messages with Siri on AirPods. However, this functionality is limited to second-generation AirPods, AirPods Pro, and compatible Beats headphones powered by Apple’s H1 chip, whereas Announce Calls is available on basically any modern iPhone.
What do you think of the ability for Siri to announce all incoming calls to your iPhone? Have you tried this out, or do you use this feature? Let us know your experiences, thoughts, and comments as always.
Typos in the 2nd paragraph – “you’ll have his feature” “sine announce calls”
Attention: the iPhone doesn’t ring/announce through Headphones when you have Earpods connected via the Lightning Port, only when using AirPods via Bluetooth.
I recently upgraded from an iPhone 6 [where ring/announce worked through the earphone jack connection to EarPods] to an iPhone 12 and it took two calls to Support and a further two visits to an Apple Store before before someone finally told me it no longer worked that way.
There is no option to revert to the more useful version.