Siri Stopped Talking on Speakers

Lawrence,

I can't thank you enough for your "final answer." I had tried everything to make Siri speak. I spent TWO hours on the phone with Apple Support. We went thru a number of procedures which included soft reset, hard reset, checking the settings, restoring my iPhone to factory settings, and reinstalling my backup. Those didn't solve my problem and the end result was being told that I would have to do a "restore" and then install ALL my apps, photos, etc. from scratch. That was going to be a lot of work. So I was planning to wait for iOS 11 to see if that solved my problem.

In the meantime I (fortunately) ran across your suggestions...and your "final answer" post from Nov 4, 2011 1:21 PM caught my eye. I had NO IDEA there were TWO volume settings for the iPhone. One for Siri and one for everything else. Now that I have solved my "Siri not speaking" problem, I am shocked that Apple Support did not have me check that as the very first step. Even after I told Apple Support that I could "hear" Siri thru my wireless earbuds. That should have clued them that the Siri volume was turned off.

Thank you again for your "final answer" solution. Not having to go thru the process of reloading everything from scratch saved me a lot of time and frustration.

Bart Bartlett

Canton, GA

I had exactly the same problem and espent over a day (I tried everything) trying to figuring it Out what was wrong with it until I read you post, really easy and dumb but helpful. It works now

I have the same problem with the ding and prompt working only via headphones. Plugging in and unplugging just stops Siri from speaking entirely. It hasn't resolved the problem. Siri's volume is all the way up. Prompts enabled.

This is obviously a mixer/audio device selection bug Apple hasn't been bothered to fix for YEARS. There's a similar problem when unplugging headphones when my iPad Pro is asleep; if I unplug the audio cable, it never switches to speakers. I have to wake the iPad and then plug and unplug or I get no audio.

Friends, I have just the solution for you! And it has worked on two iphones!

I had the same problem. Siri was audible only on the earbuds or bluetooth, but no longer audible on the speakers. Speaker worked for everything else, but not Siri.

I tried everything without success. Then I called Apple Care and they couldn't figure it out either. They gave up and sent me a replacement iPhone 4S which I received today.

I couldn't believe it -- the replacement phone had the same problem! Siri wasn't audible on the speakers. So I combed through the iPhone forums and found one that claimed the 100% solution to a similar problem where music would no longer play on the speakers but only on the earphones was to remove and reinsert the earphones for several seconds into the earphone jack while the music was playing. The guy on the forum claimed he has never heard of this solution not working.

So I wondered if that technique would work with Siri, and tried it. I inserted the earphones, pressed and held down the Home button to activate Siri, and while Siri was talking I removed and reinserted the earphones over and over again for several seconds. Bingo! It worked!

And get this -- I tried it on the replacement iPhone 4S Apple had just sent me and it fixed Siri on that phone too!!! It has now worked twice to repair a silent Siri!

I think there must be a hardware problem with regard to the earphone jack design. I hope Apple reads this and takes note of the solution -- they need to fix that part.

Pat pat747

I don't even know how to activate my speakers with Siri talking, can someone tell me? I only thought it/she talked through the ear-piece when raised to ear.

Can someone tell me how to talk to Siri over speakers without being in phone mode?

Craig,

Press and hold down the home button on your iPhone 4S until you hear a double ding sound, then start talking.

Pat

Pat,

Thank you, worked like a charm.

Obviously, I am a Neaderthal when it comes to working this dang phone. To think, I've been holding to my ear this whole time.

While on the home screen hold down Siri. When Siri pops up use the volume control buttons to increase the volume. I called sprint and they had no clue. They then transferred me to apple which had extended waits. While playing with the phone on hold this worked for me. Hope this helps everyone.

Pat747 - THANKS! I was using Siri in the car with my bluetooth system. Came in the house and less than a minute later, Siri wouldn't work. I read your message here and put some earphones on and - what do you know - I could hear the ding and Siri talking. I only had to put the earphones in once, pull then out once and Siri was back working again! THANKS again.

Thank goodness someone knows how to resolve this! It was driving me mad i couldn't figure out why Siri was talking thru the speakerphone one minute and not the next. Pulling the earplug in and out of the phone jack worked a charm. Thanks

I have this EXACT problem Pat, although your solution did not work. This is the second replacement iphone 4s I've gotten for failure of the external speaker/ issues with iPhone audio. And nonetheless, I was never able to restore the new phone and download my media from my old phone with iCloud due to "backup failure" which then went on to tell me I all of a sudden needed to buy more storage on iCloud. When will the issues end?... Anyways, I really do not want to have to go through the trouble again of getting a new phone while having to figure out how to transfer info from my current replacement phone plus the LAST phone to yet ANOTHER replacement phone... I've called apple support multiple times, and each time they were not able to resolve the issues.... HELP PLEASE??!!

Sincerely,

Frustrated apple customer

Siri has stopped using the external speaker on my iPhone too, and none of the solutions offered here work.

hold down the home button and when siri answers change the volume. siri's volume is different thant the system volume.

when i hold down home, siri pops up a text that says: "how may i help you?"

in text, it is not spoken by siri. it this correct?