Paul Morris on September 22, 2016, 11:16 pm

New In iOS 10: ‘Announce Calls’ Feature For iPhone Audibly Speaks Incoming Caller’s Name

A new feature for iPhone in iOS 10 dubbed ‘Announce Calls’ audibly speaks out the name of the incoming caller. Here’s how it works.

iOS 10 has some extremely powerful and exciting features built-in that Apple has taken every opportunity to talk about. There’s a revamped Messages experience, a new notification and widget experience, and even a redesigned Maps app that makes navigation and finding places of interest so much easier. All of iOS 10’s marketed and advertised features are great, but it’s sometimes the ones that go unnoticed, or the smaller integrations, that can offer the best value.

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One of those smaller additions, which incidentally isn’t having a song and dance made about it, is the ability for incoming calls to be audibly announced by iOS 10. This feature can be extremely useful when driving and connected to a Bluetooth car kit, or when in a busy state and not being able to immediately glance at the display to ascertain who is actually calling. It’s not enabled by default, so we’re going to take a look at how to activate it.

Step 1: We need to start in the settings for the Phone app that comes built-in. To get there, launch the Settings app on your iPhone and scroll down to select Phone.

Step 2: The Phone preferences should be split into multiple individual groups, as shown in a grouped table view. Under the section with the header “CALLS“, tap on Announce Calls.

Step 3: Within this section, you now have four options:

Always: Pretty self-explanatory. Selecting Always will ensure that the caller’s name or number is announced under all conditions.
Headphones & Car: This option will ensure that the caller’s name or number is only announced when the iPhone is connected via Bluetooth to a car, or via Bluetooth or a wired connection to headphones.
Headphones Only: Announced the caller’s name or number when connected to headphones only.
Never: The default, and fairly self-explanatory. Never make use of this feature.

Step 4: Select one of the options above to tailor the Announce Calls feature to your own personal requirements. The easiest way to test this is to select Always, which means that all incoming calls will be announced.

And that, as they say, is all she wrote. From now on, whenever an incoming call is received, the iOS 10 system installed on the iPhone will recognize that the Announce Calls feature is in operation and will always announce those calls. Or, will only announce under the chosen conditions if you went for something other than Always as your desired setting.