When you enable the feature that lets your AirPods read your messages loudly, you’ll always get your texts read out to you when you have a new message. That’s insanely convenient in some scenarios since you don’t have to interface with your device to know the contents of the messages you receive.
However, the convenience could turn out to become a privacy flaw when someone else is listening to a podcast from your iPhone using your AirPods. Apparently, you don’t want them listening to messages that should be for your eyes (and eyes alone).
In this article, I’ll show you how to stop making Siri read messages to you through your AirPods. Also, you’ll learn how to turn it on again, in case you missed the feature and you’re looking to enable it again after disabling it for the first time.
Why Do AirPods Read My Messages?
Before going into how you can stop your AirPods from reading all your incoming messages as soon as they arrive, it’s crucial to learn why the device is reading them in the first place. So, why do your AirPods read your messages whenever it’s connected?
If your AirPods is reading your text messages, it’s often because the Announce Messages with Siri feature is enabled. This feature is what makes Siri read every incoming text message to your phone immediately after they arrive, which is why you think your AirPods is reading your messages.
For the feature to work, you must have your AirPods connected to your iPhone. That way, Siri can confirm that you’re the one listening through the AirPods, a precaution that prevents any random person from snooping on your messages without your permission.
One of the reasons why the Announce Messages with Siri feature is annoying is that it works over anything you’re currently listening to on your iPhone. If you have a song or podcast playing, the feature will disrupt it to announce an incoming message, even if it’s just an unimportant message from your service provider promoting a useless offer.
Fortunately, if you can’t stand AirPods reading your messages, you don’t have to. You can easily head over to your Settings app to disable the Announce Messages with Siri feature. The following section will show you all the necessary steps required to disable the feature on your iPhone.
How to Make AirPods Not Read Messages
As the preceding section hints, the function that makes your AirPods read your texts to you is a Siri feature you enabled on your iPhone. If you can’t recall enabling it, you either got the phone used or someone with access to your device enabled it on your behalf. Either way, it doesn’t come enabled by default.
However, since it’s a setting you can easily enable, it’s also pretty easy to disable it. All you need to do is to disable the Announce Messages feature. To do this, you should have your AirPods connected to your iPhone.
Then, you can follow the steps below to stop your AirPods from reading your text messages.
- Head over to the Notifications settings on your iPhone
If your iPhone is running on iOS 14 or newer, you’ll need to launch the Settings app and select the Notifications option. For older versions of iOS, however, the Notifications option is unavailable from within the Settings app. Instead, users will have to select the Siri & Search option.
- Disable Announce Messages with Siri
After selecting the appropriate option for your operating system from earlier, you should go ahead and look for the “Announce Messages with Siri” option. It should have a toggle set to the on position, which is why you’re having all your text messages read out to you.
If you no longer want to listen to every message that you get on your iPhone, you can turn off the toggle to disable the feature. From that moment on, you should stop getting a verbal account of every message you receive read into your AirPods by Siri.
However, if the disturbance aspect is what you detest, you don’t have to disable the feature completely. Apple knows you have messages that you prioritize, and they made it possible to set Siri to only read out those messages. The following section will show you how to customize the feature to make it better.
How to Make AirPods Only Read Important Messages
If you enabled the Announce Messages with Siri feature without making any modifications to the settings, you’ll notice that the feature reads all of your messages when you have your AirPods connected. Understandably, I’ve not met a person who likes it that way; I mean, who wants to have all their texts read?
Thankfully, Apple makes it easy to make your AirPods only read certain messages. That way, you only have to listen to the messages that matter, and not just any spam message from a random marketer trying to sell you something you don’t need.
To do that, head back to your Settings app, exactly at the point where you enabled the Announce Messages with Siri feature. When you get there, you’ll see an “Announce Messages From” option that you can select to choose what kind of messages you want Siri to read.
There are options to let Siri read only messages from people in your contact list, your recent list, your favorites list, or anyone that messages you. I recommend setting it to everyone in your favorites list and then modifying your favorites to only include certain contacts.
There are many other options for hands-free messaging right from inside the Notifications settings on your iPhone. You can browse through them to see how you can make messaging easier and faster on your iPhone, without compromising your privacy.
Conclusion
Having Siri read out messages to you could be helpful in some cases, but that’s not usually the case. If you’re not one of the fans of the feature, you may be looking for a way to disable it completely. This article shows you how to make AirPods not read messages on your iPhone.