I am using the latest version of iOS 15 on my iPhone XR.
I was trying to play a voice mail mesage on the speaker but couldn't find any way of turning on the speaker. When I hold the phone to my ear the audio is often very quiet and, unfortunately, when I hold the phone away from my ear it doesn't switch to speaker mode as when making or receiving a phone call. Thus not only is the message hard to ear, but it is difficult to share and have someone else listen at the same time.
There must be an easy way of having the voice mail play out of the speaker. If anyone has the secret, please let me know!
Thanks.
--Pete
Comments
Listening to voicemail
Hi,
I wish they would make it as easy as you said but there is a speaker for speakerphone button by the call back and delete buttons. The way you activate it is to start playing the voicemail you want to play and then double tap the speaker button 2 times. The first time you double tap it highlights the speaker but does not turn the speaker on. Once you double tap a second time the speaker will be activated. Depending how long the voicemail is you might have to select the play button again to play the voicemail so it plays on speakerphone.
Thanks for advice, but...
Thanks for the advice on how to play using the speaker.
I followed your directions, but the phone was very unresponsive to flicking with Voiceover once the voice mail message started playing. I couldn't even find the speaker button.
What a mess Apple made of this for Voiceover users!
Oh yes, there is a "Playbcak Destination" button. Unfortunately the only options this gives is about "More information", "Share", and "Activate" (which gives the "More Info" option). So even this "Playback Destination" button is useless.
Time to write to Apple again about this. I did write several years ago, but the experience is still just as horrible using Voiceover.
thanks anyway.
--Pete
If you tell Siri to play…
If you tell Siri to play your voice mail, it will play on speaker. They broke that feature in recent versions of IOS but it's fixed now.
The possible solution: Was Playing Voice Mails through speaker
First, thanks for everyone's suggestions on how to get Voice Mail to play through the iPhone's speaker.
After consulting with my sighted wife on how she manages to do this so easily, I think I think I know what is wrong with the UI when using Voiceover and how to easily get around the problem.
Here is a description of the problem and how to get around it:
1. When one opens the dialog for a Voice Mail message by tapping on the phone number, one will see a variety of buttons including "Play", "Playback Destination", "Call", etc.
2. If one swipes up and down on the "Playback Destination" button, one sees options such as "More Info", "Share", and "Activate". At first these all seem to be uuseless for changing to speaker mode.
3. What is apparent to the sighted user, but not the Voiceover user, is that when activating the "Playback Destination" button, the output toggles the use of speaker mode on and off. Thus, if the message is playing quietly and not through the speaker, activating this button will play audio through the speaker. One can toggle this button either before starting playback of the message or during playbakc of the mesage.
4. The UI problem for Voiceover users here is that there is no indication through Voiceover that activating the "Playback destination" button acts as a toggle of speaker mode. Nor does the text associated with the button change depending on the on/off state of the toggle. Thus it isn't apparent to Voiceover users what this button is actually doing.
5. One other issue/hint here. As with most other audio volume settings on the iOS device, hitting the volume up/down buttons only changes the volume of the type of audio stream that is currently active. For example, if Siri is speaking, hitting the volume up/down buttons only changes the volume of Siri speech but not the volume of Voiceover. Similarly, if one hits the up/down buttons while Voiceover is speaking, only the volume of Voiceover will change but not the volume of Siri responses. Thus, if one wants to change the volume of the VoiceMail audio, one has to hit the volume up/down buttons while a VoiceMail is playing.
Anyway, I hope that helps someone. This is very confusing for Voiceover users. Hopefully the issue can be addressed by Apple so that the user experience for those using Voiceover to listen to VoiceMail messages can be improved.
--Pete
Thanks so much for explaining how it works.
I was listening to a voicemail yesterday and tried your suggestions, and it worked wonderfully.
Glad that worked
Glad my suggestions on how to work that with Voiceover worked for you. I wouldn't have been able to figure out what was going on without my sighted wife seeing what was happening on the screen and comparing to how sighted folks manage this simple task.
Hope Apple can fix this experience for Voiceover users. I've already written to them. We'll see what happens.
--Pete