Turn off Voice Control on iOS

May 23, 2022 9:07 AM

I never use iOS Voice Control. How can I stop it from accidentally activating when I press play/pause on my wired EarPods?

I use wired EarPod headphones to listen to stuff on my iPhone (mostly using the Overcast podcast app). Occasionally when I press the play/pause button on the EarPods to resume play, this instead activates Voice Control. I then have to press the play/pause button several more times to dismiss Voice Control and resume playback.

This happens at random: not every time, and I haven't noticed that I'm pressing the button in a different way when this happens. It's happened with multiple sets of EarPods, multiple iPhones, and multiple versions of iOS over the years. Voice Control doesn't accidentally activate under any other circumstances.

I never use Voice Control or Siri and I'd be happy to turn them both off completely if that would fix this. In Settings > Accessibility I have Voice Control set to Off, but this evidently hasn't fixed the problem.

posted by logopetria to Technology (2 answers total)

I think you just need to go to Settings>Siri & Search and disable it there. Pretty much first thing I do on any new device!! Voice control in Accessibility is more of an extension for certain situations where a person might not be able to use the screen or touch an option, a "next button... next button... OK" kind of thing.

It may be that doing a "long press" is what activates the voice interface, and the button is just a little sticky. There are various little shortcuts like this hidden around iOS.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:26 AM on May 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I've tried doing this and I can confirm that it hasn't worked. I think you're right about it being a "long press" issue. Is there any way to deactivate the "long press for Voice Control"?
posted by logopetria at 1:37 PM on May 26, 2022