Did You Know Your iPhone Can Read Things to You?

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier. In many ways, it does without us thinking about it. But it can probably help out a lot more than you realize. Case in point: You shouldn’t have to actually read anything on your iPhone yourself.

You might be reading this article right now with your own eyes. Why? Instead, your iPhone can read out loud to you, without you having to do much to prompt it. This isn’t a new feature, either: Apple has made speech a hidden iPhone feature for years now. In fact, there are multiple ways to get your iPhone to read to you.

The easiest is to just ask your iPhone to read to you, via Siri. This works when reading articles on Safari. Just open a webpage you want to check out, then ask Siri something like “read this.” The assistant will start reading the page’s contents out loud to you, complete with a menu pop-up with playback controls.

The first is perhaps a bit more convoluted than necessary: Open Settings, then go to Accessibility > Spoken Content. Here, make sure “Speak Selection” is turned on. This feature will present a “Speak” option whenever you select text on your iPhone. Choose it, and your iPhone will read the selected text out loud to you.

This option works on any selected text on your iPhone, so it’s great whenever you want a small selection read out loud to you. Asking Siri to read to you is obviously a more convenient option, but it’s more limited, since it mainly works in Safari. If you’re looking for text to be read out loud in Mail, Messages, or another app, try this trick.