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Siri’s missing essential feature

M

MacGit

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 15, 2008
39
2
Manchester, England
I’ve been struggling for a day and a half trying to find out why Siri no longer reads back my dictated messages before asking for confirmation to send or change it. I have spoken over the phone to no less than six Apple support technicians who all had no idea that this was now a missing feature, they never mentioned it, and having spent the day trying to find the solution, including a visit to the Apple Store itself, I have now been told with ‘authority’, that the feature was removed in iOS 16. Considering Siri gets your dictation wrong in 90% of cases, it’s absolutely essential Siri reads back your dictated message, just to reassure you that she’s got it right before sending it. How can a company the size and scope of Apple think that this is a good move? What’s wrong with keeping that feature in but switchable?
Are you aware of this “new feature“? Or have I been sold a pup down at Apple Store? I’d love to know your thoughts and whether you’ve come across this yourselves.
 
I dont use this feature often but used it a couple of times recentliy over Carplay to reply to my wife and it worked fine. Siri read back the message to me and asked me if it was ok etc.
 
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I have seen another thread on these forums from someone complaining that Siri always reads back dictated messages, and couldn't find a way to turn it off. I can't find the thread now. But this tells me that it must be a toggle somewhere you can turn on/off.
 
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ManuCH said:
I have seen another thread on these forums from someone complaining that Siri always reads back dictated messages, and couldn't find a way to turn it off. I can't find the thread now. But this tells me that it must be a toggle somewhere you can turn on/off.
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Is this not simply Settings > Siri & Search > Automatically Send Messages? Or have I misunderstood something?
IMG_58745C4C617D-1.jpeg
 
PeteBurgh said:
Is this not simply Settings > Siri & Search > Automatically Send Messages? Or have I misunderstood something?
View attachment 2094045
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No it’s not I’m afraid. That just stops Siri from saying anything at all before sending it. My issue -or the issue with ios16 is they appear to have removed the read-back of your text you just dictated. So she no longer reads back your dictated message before asking you “Send or change”. The way it was before, was in my view quite essential because she would read back your message and nine times out of 10. She would get one or two words wrong, giving you the opportunity to edit or change the message before going on to send it. I hope that makes sense? And thanks for your suggestion.
 
I thought that was what that setting was for...but you are saying that simply avoids the "ready to send it?" prompt?

Siri always reads back my texts on CarPlay, so wondering if it something specific to your phone...hard restart??
 
MozMan68 said:
I thought that was what that setting was for...but you are saying that simply avoids the "ready to send it?" prompt?

Siri always reads back my texts on CarPlay, so wondering if it something specific to your phone...hard restart??
Click to expand...
Nope. Apparently she reads it back on CarPlay yes, but nowhere else like she used to. She used to read your message back before offering to send it, now she doesn’t since iOS 16. Not specific to my phone according to the Manager at the Apple Store and his techies.
 
ManuCH said:
I found a workaround from some years ago, maybe it's helpful:

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Thanks, yes I came across the same (and several other) threads and is exactly what I now have to do. The beauty of how it was originally was that you could park your phone some distance away from you when you were working in a room, or when you just weren’t holding the phone, and you could reply to messages and initiate messages using Siri, and because you haven’t got the phone in your hand, and because Siri very often gets it wrong, her automatically reading it back to you to check she’s got it right was a godsend and in my view - because Siri is so hopelessly unreliable - it was an absolutely essential feature. Now, Apple have added another step to a simple process. It seems with every update and so-called upgrade, Apple imitate all the things that we used to criticise Windows for, that is, making a simple task, a complicated and unwieldy one. This is another example. Rant over.
 
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Just tested on 16.0.3 and sorta working for me. Most times it does read back, occasionally not.

Maybe Settings > Siri > Siri Responses has "Automatic" on and it learned to not speak: turn on Prefer Spoken?
 
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