Shortcut with "speak text" will not run unless phone is unlocked.

Question

Shortcut with "speak text" will not run unless phone is unlocked.

Looks like this is an old issue, as seen here:

Allow shortcuts to run when phone is lock… - Apple Community

Still has not been fixed. I created a shortcut with a "Speak text" step, which works well when running it from the Shortcuts app, and when using Siri to activate it when my phone is unlocked. If I try to activate it from Siri when my phone is locked, Siri says that I need to unlock my phone first. I have Siri set to activate even when the phone is locked. This is especially annoying since I wanted to use this shortcut via CarPlay (activated by Siri), but to use it I have to hold my phone up to my face while I'm driving (which is not what I want).

iPhone 14 Pro

Posted on Jun 10, 2025 2:29 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

weirdwidewebb Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 13, 2025 12:09 PM in response to weirdwidewebb

Follow up after more testing: This appears to be caused by the "Dismiss Siri and continue" step. I wanted the text to be spoken to just be spoken (and not display any text on the screen), so I had placed the dismiss Siri step in the shortcut workflow. Removing that, so that now the shortcut grabs the text (from a URL), speaks it, and also shows it on the screen, allows the shortcut to run when the phone is locked. Not sure how to suppress the text from being shown on the screen, but overall gets me the behavior I want.

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Answer 2

Alancito

Level 7

30,688 points

Jun 13, 2025 12:55 PM in response to weirdwidewebb

weirdwidewebb wrote: "...Not sure how to suppress the text from being shown on the screen..."

See if any of the switches here help:

Settings > Siri > Siri Responses

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Answer 3

Bob Timmons

Level 10

189,600 points

Jun 10, 2025 2:36 PM in response to weirdwidewebb

Sorry can't help. As users......just like you.....we have no way of knowing what Apple may or may not do.

If you want to tell Apple directly........Feedback - iPhone - Apple

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Answer 4

Jun 13, 2025 1:13 PM in response to Alancito

I had "Spoken Responses" set to automatic, and also tried setting that to "Prefer spoken responses," but that didn't work. Text still is displayed while Siri is reading the text aloud. The other 2 toggles are set to off.

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Answer 5

Jun 10, 2025 2:49 PM in response to Bob Timmons

Was hoping that someone in the community had a solution or workaround. No offense, but your reply was not helpful or constructive.

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Shortcut with "speak text" will not run unless phone is unlocked.

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