The Voice Control system was first introduced in iOS 3.2 on the iPhone 3GS. It has since been generally superseded by Siri, a more flexible system that uses Apple’s servers for voice processing, but Voice Control is still in wide use and has its own advantages. Here are all the Voice Control commands for English.
The list is somewhat fluid because Voice Control commands often understand several grammatical forms, and of course because Apple sometimes adds new commands or new forms of old commands.
If you want to learn about Siri, try these articles instead:
This list has been updated with information from the iOS 7 user manual, so it covers all commands available in iOS 7. Most of the commands have been the same for several iOS versions, but that isn’t guaranteed.
For a more compact list of these same commands suitable for printing out, also check out the iDevice Voice Control Commands Cheat Sheet.
Setting Up Voice Control
To use Voice Controls on devices that support Siri, you need to turn off Siri first. You can do this on your device in Settings > General > Siri.
By default, Voice Control expects you to speak voice commands in the language that’s set for iPhone (in Settings > General > International > Language). To use Voice Control in another language or dialect, go to Settings > General > International > Voice Control. You should do this even if your “language” is just a dialect or accent setting – for example my iPhone Language is set to plain “English” (which means USA English, generally) but I have Voice Control set up for “Australian English” because that’s what I speak.
Voice Control for the Music app is always on, but you can prevent voice dialing when the iPhone is locked. Go to Settings > Settings > General > Touch ID & Passcode (iPhone 5s) or Settings > General > Passcode Lock (other models), and turn off Voice Dial.
Starting Voice Control
Hold down the phone’s home button or the middle button on your corded headset until the voice control feature comes up on screen and you hear a beep. This should take about 2 seconds.
For some bluetooth headsets, holding the ‘call’ button for two seconds will also work but this is not true for all bluetooth headsets and depends on the manufacturer.

For best results:
- Speak clearly and naturally.
- Say only Voice Control commands, names, and numbers. Pause slightly between commands.
- Use full names.
Phone Commands
These, unsurprisingly, only work on devices that can make phone calls.
- Call a contact
- “Call” or “dial” plus the person’s name, nickname, or relationship to you – they must already be entered into your address book. Optionally add “at” and the phone number’s type at the end such as “home”, “work”, “mobile”. For example, “Dial John Smith Work” or “Call Mum” or “Call Phil at work”.
- Call a number
- “Call” or “Dial” plus the number, reciting each digit. For example, “Dial 555 9592”.
- Make a correction
- Say “not that one”, “wrong”, “nope”, “no”, or “not that”.
FaceTime Commands
These are the same as the phone commands, but use the verb “FaceTime” instead of “call” or “dial”.
Music Commands
- Start music
- Say “play” or “play music”.
- Play from a specific playlist
- Say “play playlist” and the name of the playlist. For example, “Play playlist gym songs”.
- Play from a specific album
- Say “play album” plus the name of the album. For example “Play album Dark Side Of The Moon”.
- Play from a specific artist
- Say “play artist” plus the name of the artist. For example, “Play artist Pink Floyd”. The alternate “Play songs by” plus the name of the artist has also been reported to work*.
- Pause music
- Say “pause”, “pause music”, or “stop”.
- Skip to next song
- Say “next song”, “next track”, or “next”.
- Go back to previous song
- Say “previous song”, “previous track”, or “previous”.
- Shuffle the current playlist
- Just say “shuffle”.
- Turn on Genius feature
- Say “Genius”, “play more like this”, or “play more songs like this”.
- Get information about the current track
- Say “what’s playing”, or for more specific information say “what song is this”, “who sings this song”, or “who is this song by”.
Misc Commands
- Ask the time
- Say “what is the time” or “what time is it”.
- Cancel voice control
- Simply say “cancel” or “stop”.
- Get help
- Say “help”.
Other Languages
The iPhone User Guide for your country will have most of the voice commands available listed in it. Your best bet is to go to the Apple support page for iPhone in your language and download the most recent user guide, then read through that for Voice Control commands in your language.
Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch: Tips for using Voice Control document also has some specific tips for users of Polish, Russian, Finnish, and Japanese, as well as general tips that everybody will find useful.
For a more compact list of these same commands suitable for printing out, also check out the iDevice Voice Control Commands Cheat Sheet.
Do you know of more commands I’ve missed? How are the speech commands working for you? Leave a comment and let me know.
– Ricky
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Great article… but just a note on contacts… you should really clarify that you need to first set relationships before the phone with recognize them. For example: saying “john smith is my father” will give you the option to confirm, then be able to say “call my father” and it will call john smith. This is not an automatic function as implied above.
Really good point Timmie – thanks for reminding me! I’ll edit it into the article as soon as I get to a keyboard.