How to have Siri announce messages in Apple’s CarPlay

If you have CarPlay set up to work with Siri, you can allow Apple’s personal digital assistant to announces messages on iPhones running iOS 15 and later.

With iOS 15-17, Siri can announce your incoming messages in your car. With this feature turned on, Siri plays a tone, then announces the sender’s name and reads the message. If a message is long, Siri announces the sender’s name and says only that they sent you a message. You can ask Siri to read the full message.

To turn on Announce Messages from your iPhone:

1. Open the Settings app, then tap Notifications.
2. Tap Announce Notifications.
3. Tap CarPlay, then turn on Announce Messages. From here, you can also change when you want announcements to start.
4. Tap Back to manage which messages Siri reads. Tap Messages, then select either Time Sensitive and Direct Messages or All Notifications.

To turn on Announce Messages from your car’s display:

1. Open the Settings app in CarPlay, then select Announce Messages.
2. Turn on Announce Messages.
3. Select Announce Options to choose whether messages will be spoken or not at the start of your drive.

(This how-to is based on my experiences and info on Apple’s support pages — where the images sometimes come from.)