Learn how to ask Siri to read web articles in Safari on your iPhone and iPad so you can multitask without having to stare at the screen all the time.
Ask Siri to read web articles in Safari
1) Open an article in Safari on your iPhone or iPad.
2) Invoke Siri and say something like:
- “Read this”
- “Read this web page”
- “Read this article”
- “Read this to me”
- “I want to listen to this page”
Your iPhone will start reading the article in the current Siri voice, briefly displaying a panel with listening controls at the top of the screen.
Problem with Siri in iOS 18
Siri reads web articles flawlessly in iOS 17 and older versions. However, your experience may not be as smooth if your iPhone uses the iOS 18 software with Apple Intelligence set up. Problems may range from a voice command failing to work to getting a prompt to share a screenshot to ChatGPT, which is pointless in this case. Or the assistant just gives up, saying it can’t understand what you’re saying.
However, I’ve discovered that the aforementioned voice commands do work when I turn off the “Use ChatGPT” option in Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri > ChatGPT. Here’s a screenshot of Siri on iOS 18 reading an article in Safari on my iPhone.
Listen to a page in Safari
Follow these steps to bypass spoken commands and have Siri read a webpage aloud to you:
- Open an article on your favorite blog or news site in Safari.
- Tap the icon on the left side of the address field.
- Choose Listen to Page from the menu.
Try these fixes if the “Listen to Page” option is missing:
- Refresh the web page
- Force quit and reopen Safari
- Invoke Reader Mode, then use the Listen to Page command
- Try another web page
- Restart your iPhone
- Update to the latest iOS version
In-app listening controls
Once Siri has started reading a webpage, you can reveal the playback by following these steps.
- Select the tab with the article that Siri is reading.
- Hit the speaker icon in Safari’s address bar to display playback controls. If they don’t show up, try again.
- Use the playback controls to pause (||), skip back and forward (- and +), and change the speaking rate (1x).
You can lock the screen
Siri will continue reading the web article when your iPhone enters sleep mode. The listening controls will appear on the Lock Screen and inside the Control Center as soon as you wake the device.
Pause or end listening
You can tell Siri to stop Siri reading you an article in 3 ways:
- Follow the above steps to pause the playback using the in-app controls
- Use the media controls on your Lock Screen and in the Notification and Control Center.
- Force Quit Safari.
It works only in Safari
Siri’s ability to read web articles is currently limited to Safari despite Chrome, Firefox, and other iPhone web browsers using the same WebKit rendering engine that Apple’s browser incorporates. In other words, Siri cannot read you web articles in Chrome or Firefox. Siri also won’t read pages in Safari for Mac, but Apple could add this ability via a future update to macOS.
What type of web articles can Siri read?
Siri can read most web pages, with these important caveats:
1) Page must be Reader View-compatible: Siri can only read web pages that work with Safari’s ad-free Reader View. If you don’t see the Show Reader option after hitting the options button in the address bar, that page is unavailable in Reader View and Siri won’t be able to read it to you. You may see “Reader Available” in the URL bar briefly when Safari is loading a Reader View-compatible article.
2) Uncover the text: Opening a Wikipedia article on your iPhone will hide most of the text under collapsible subheadings to improve navigation. As Siri won’t read any hidden text, be sure to expand hidden sections and sub-heading before asking Siri to read that page to you.
If Siri won’t read you certain web pages no matter what, you can always try the various text-to-speech methods available on an iPhone, iPad, and Mac.