Siri says I need to unlock my iPhone first

Today is 10.3.24 at 5:21 PM EDT, and Siri continues to tell me to unlock my phone before it will make a call. However it worked perfectly fine at noon today. I have done all the troubleshooting including disabling Siri, locked settings, network settings, you name it, I’ve done it. What’s going on?

I don’t know how long you have been using an iPhone but I agree with the OP. I used to be able to send messages while driving with Siri while my phone is locked. But not anymore. I have made adjustments so Siri will read me received messages but I can’t reply while driving. Which is ridiculous.

And you are wrong. I can’t use “hey siri” to activate it on anyone else’s phones nearby. When I am with others that also have iPhones and I say “hey siri”, only MY Siri responds. Heck, even with my iPad right next to my iPhone, Siri defaults to my phone and my iPad Siri instantly goes quiet.

So I don’t understand why you are suggesting otherwise.

Go to FACE ID & Passcode, enter to passcode and then scroll down to VOICE DIAL and enable it (toggle to ON). That's it.

Alright very senior guy, you are wrong. You can’t go up to any phone and say hey siri. It doesn’t work like that anymore. Now you train siri with “hey siri” phrases. Try doing this with someone who has not set up siri yet.

it will tell you to repeatedly say various phrases beginning with siri or hey siri.

and this was a very good way to unlock phones back in the day. It got disabled at some point!

To run most apps on your phone you need to unlock it. That is a basic security feature; it’s there so someone doesn’t just pick up your phone and run apps. Thus, to run any app that might contain personal data, such as email, messages, notes, etc, the phone must be unlocked. You can ask Siri for the weather, because weather data are not personal. But you can’t ask Siri to read your messages, or show your photos, unless it is unlocked, because if you could ANYONE could; just pick up your phone and say, "Hey Siri, read my messages”, or “Hey Siri, transfer $10,000 from my Apple Cash to John Doe"

Sorry, Senior Member, but this information is incorrect. I use 'Hey, Siri' around my house every day, especially when I can't find my phone; I'll yell out to it and say, "Hey, Siri. Where are you?" My partner's phone is also in our house, and his Siri never replies -- even when it's right next to mine.

Why else would the iPhone ask us to repeat a number of messages when we're enabling this feature? (see below).

Siri does not have speaker recognition; it can’t distinguish you from anyone else speaking, except for "Hey Siri". And you don’t train it to recognize you; training is to recognize your accents. And you can also invoke Siri by holding the side button, and that will work for any speaker. Speaker recognition would require hours of training, not 2 minutes.

I don’t see what facial recognition has to do with Siri; FaceID cannot be fooled; it recognizes you, and only you.

I got this problem on an update a couple of years back. When I'm working on the coffee van and the phone is in its wall bracket, I can no longer ask Siri to read back texts, so I can hear customer orders. I am trying to understand if Apple have done this to encourage me to buy Ear Buds or Headphones, but I can't wear them when I'm making coffee and talking to customers anyway. I have also tried, at the suggestion of the people in the Apple Store in Brisbane, experimenting with Focus, but nothing has changed. So I'm stuck with it.

KryptonianAI wrote:

I don’t know how long you have been using an iPhone but I agree with the OP. I used to be able to send messages while driving with Siri while my phone is locked. But not anymore. I have made adjustments so Siri will read me received messages but I can’t reply while driving. Which is ridiculous.

And you are wrong. I can’t use “hey siri” to activate it on anyone else’s phones nearby. When I am with others that also have iPhones and I say “hey siri”, only MY Siri responds. Heck, even with my iPad right next to my iPhone, Siri defaults to my phone and my iPad Siri instantly goes quiet.

So I don’t understand why you are suggesting otherwise.

Let's see, you are arguing with a VERY senior member of this forum, who has more than 200,000 points here, after years and years and years of helping people with iPhone questions/problems. I guarantee if you want to challenge him on his knowledge and experience with iPhone, you will lose the challenge HUGELY.

But more to the point, your assertions are patently false. Siri does NOT recognize individual voices. I can walk up to ANY iPhone and say "Hey Siri" and if the user has enabled Siri, their phone will respond to my voice, whether their phone has EVER heard my voice.

If I say Siri or Hey Siri, my two brothers and my best friend’s iPhone all respond simultaneously. And before you ask, I have had every single iPhone since the very first one, I get the new model every single year together with two MacBooks, two Mac mini’s, three iPads, Apple Watch, and eleven HomePods. So yes, I think I can call myself close to an expert. Siri sucks and everyone knows it. Let’s all pray for 2024 Siri revamp.

@lobsterghost1 actual Apple app developer here. I will challenge “senior member” as what he has said makes zero sense, whether he has helped the world out a million times over or not. We don’t need to get technical about anything other than to say in what universe are you all able to walk into a room and activate Siri on OTHER peoples phones. That’s only been the case with android phones when YouTube videos and other recordings could activate “hey google,” but that’s far and between.

There’s never to my knowledge been a time when you can walk into a room and announce “hey siri” activating it on others phones. If you want me to run serious tests AT the Apple Store, record it, and submit it online I certainly can. But please refrain from backing up false and inaccurate information simply because it came from a senior member. This information is blatantly false, and many users have confirmed this with their spouses phones when announcing “hey siri.” If we all have forgotten, “hey siri” is first activated by saying it a few times and even announcing small phrases to train it specifically for your phone/account. It’s wild someone with such a high level of support would seriously believe, and thus explain, it to happen any other way.

to the other users wanting an answer, reference Faisal’s answer please.

Ran an update this morning and now siri refused to open maps with the phone locked while using airpods. I had to unlock the phone and while talking to the phone told siri to open maps. The command went thru and maps opened bit it had prompts as if it was being opened for the first time(welcome to maps tips window). While that was going on simultaneously siri’s little bubble circle was at the bottom of the screen and behind that circle were oval circles showing a backlog of a whole bunch of notifications of what siri was saying including the multiple “you need to unlock your iphone” messages. So i promptly went thru every app on my phone and opened them to find any other apps that apparently think they have never been opened before using siri and this seems to have solved the problem.

sad

Hey Siri I need to unlock my iPhone First