Having Siri Read my Messages is Less Reliable Now

TidBITS Talk
1

I’ve been wanting to post this for a while…

For years, I’ve been able to listen to text messages from family and friends from the car via Siri:

Play my text messages

I had to include the word “text”, or else Siri would start playing my voicemail. That worked reliably for years, until some time this past year. Now, it frequently goes to voicemail anyway.

At least once I was able to force it by saying:

Play my iMessages

But that doesn’t always work, leaving me stuck unable to hear what my wife is trying to tell me on my way home from work, which might be “don’t bother stopping at Wawa”, and I’ll be pissed that I didn’t see it until after I get there.

Has anyone else had this problem, or issues with Siri regressions in general?

2

For me, “read my text messages” has been 100% reliable. Perhaps “play” is confusing things with music, etc?

3

I may have tried that during a heated confrontation with Siri, but I don’t recall! I’m going to try this again next time I’m in the car! Thanks!

4

I don’t know if it’s related to @dave1’s situation, but I’ve noticed Siri making mistakes much more frequently in recent months on multiple devices. The most noticeable degradation in reliability is with voice recognition for text messaging. Sure, Siri long had issues with mixing up your/you’re and there/they’re/their, and occasionally it would substitute a capitalized proper noun from my contacts lists when I intended a lower case common noun (e.g., “Grant” versus “grant”), but now I can’t begin to tell you where Siri gets some words from, and its guesses at punctuation have become atrocious.

5

@bb1 I tested this in the car today in a controlled fashion, and it worked reliably! I will have to prove it out over time, but it’s looking good! THANK YOU!

1 Like