If you’re not a fan of having your iPhone speak text to you, there are plenty of other options available. Free apps and Apple’s built-in features can help you get the job done.
One of these options is to disable the auto text correction feature. This will stop the iPhone from deciding you’re trying to type something else and giving you typing feedback.
How to turn off text to speech
One of the most useful features on iPhone is its text to speech feature, which will read any text that you see on your screen. This can be especially useful for students who want to listen to their study materials while on the go.
However, while this is a really handy feature to have on your phone, it can also be annoying at times. When you’re sending a text message or writing an email and your iPhone starts speaking everything that you type, it can quickly become an irritation.
That’s why it’s important to know how to turn off text to speech on your iPhone if you don’t need it. The process is actually pretty easy and will only take a few taps on your phone.
To start, you’ll need to open the Settings app on your iPhone. If you don’t see the icon on your Home screen, you can do this by swiping down on your center Home screen, tapping inside the search field and typing “settings.”
Now, you’ll need to scroll down to the Accessibility section of the Settings menu. This section is where you’ll find the Spoken Content option and a bunch of other settings that allow you to adjust how your iPhone interacts with voice commands.
After you’ve reached this section, you’ll need to choose the Typing Feedback option. There are a couple of other options on this menu that you can turn off as well, but we’re going to focus on the Speak Auto-Text option here since it’s one of the more common and annoying ones.
Once you’ve done that, you can shut off text to speech on your iPhone and make sure that it won’t be an annoyance in the future.
Step 1: Go to Settings
If you want to turn off text to speech on your iPhone, it is a fairly easy process. All you need to do is go to Settings on your phone and disable the feature.
The first step is to open the Settings app, which can be found by opening the Today View and tapping Search. You can also search for “settings” on your device’s home screen, or tap the Settings icon that appears when you swipe down from the top of the screen.
Next, you need to navigate to the Accessibility option. This will allow you to control your iPhone’s volume, mute it, and more.
You can also enable the tap to wake function if you have a damaged home button or power key. This will make it much easier to turn on the display by tapping it, so you can get back to work fast!
If you haven’t already, it’s a good idea to disable Siri on your iPhone. Disabling Siri will remove all the voice text input options you have and prevent it from dictating text to you on a message-by-message basis.
Step 2: Go to Accessibility
Apple is committed to making its smartphones work for as many people as possible, and the company has a number of accessibility options that cater to various needs. Some of these are aimed at vision and hearing, while others are meant to ease motor difficulties.
For those with visual impairments, on-screen text can be enlarged to make it easier for someone to read or the buttons can be made larger and easier to click. This can be a big help for anyone who struggles with dyslexia or has trouble with the small print of books, apps, and menus.
Another useful feature is VoiceOver, which allows users to hear the interface’s buttons and text in various languages. It can be disabled or turned on at any time, depending on the user’s preferences.
VoiceOver also can be configured to speak selected text, such as a word that has been highlighted. This is especially helpful for people who have a hard time reading small print or just learning to read in a new language.
If you want to turn on VoiceOver, navigate to Settings > Accessibility and then tap VoiceOver. Then, you can select your preferred voice and toggle on typing feedback.
You can also set up a triple-click accessibility shortcut for some of your favorite features. This lets you rapidly access a single or multiple accessibility settings with a triple-click of the Home button or side button for devices without one.
Step 3: Go to Spoken Content
One of the best accessibility features for the iPhone is Spoken Content, which lets you have your phone read out loud anything on its screen. This is handy if you have trouble reading small text or want to listen to an ebook without looking at the screen.
The feature is activated with a keyboard shortcut that usually defaults to Option + Esc, but you can change it to something more easy to remember or customize the way it works. The Speech Controller also has buttons for playing, pause, skip forward or backward, or stop reading.
To make it easier to follow the text, Spoken Content can highlight words and sentences as it reads them. This helps your eyes track what you are hearing and ensures that it does not interrupt your reading as you move around on the page or try to scroll.
There are a few more settings you can change for Spoken Content on an iPhone, including the speaking rate and the voice that it uses to speak. You can select from a variety of voices, including US, Australian, Irish, South African and British accents.
Step 4: Go to Typing Feedback
If you want to hear characters and words spoken to you as you type on an iPhone, iOS 16 lets you turn on Typing Feedback. This accessibility feature provides auditory confirmation of keyboard input across the device, including in messaging and note-taking apps. It can also provide word suggestions and text predictions, as well as spelling corrections.
To turn on Typing Feedback, open the Settings app and select Accessibility. In the Vision section, tap Spoken Content toward the top of the screen. Then, under Spoken Content, toggle on the Typing Feedback switch (see the screenshots below).
There are several options that can be enabled for Typing Feedback: Characters, Character Hints, Speak Words, and Auto-text. These features can be especially useful for people with vision impairments who may have trouble reading aloud a single character or word.
You can also set the speaking rate to slow down or speed up the feedback. The speaking rate affects other speech accessibility features, so you’ll likely need to enable all of them if you use typing feedback.
In the Typing Feedback options, tap on each of the toggle switches to enable them, and then listen for the feedback as you type. Each toggle has descriptions below to help you understand how each of the features work.