Driving with Apple Maps can sometimes feel like you have an overly chatty co-pilot. While getting turn-by-turn directions is super helpful, those constant voice instructions can really interrupt your music or podcasts. But here’s a neat trick: you can easily tailor the navigation voice to fit your driving style. Whether you want to change the voice itself, adjust its volume, or only hear important warnings, Apple Maps lets you take control.
Imagine driving, enjoying your favorite tunes, and then a voice cuts in every few blocks telling you to turn right. Annoying, right? Good news: you can pick between a male or female voice, tweak the volume so it blends better with your music, or even mute the voice completely. There’s also an option to get only crucial alerts, skipping the regular turn instructions.
Muting Navigation Voice in Apple Maps
Turning the navigation voice on or off is super simple. You can even do it while you’re driving, directly from your iPhone screen or on CarPlay.
Here’s how to do it:
- Start your route in Apple Maps.
- Tap the navigation map on your iPhone or CarPlay screen.
- Look for a speaker icon on the right side.
- Tap the icon and choose:
- The top button to turn spoken directions on.
- The bottom button to turn them off completely.
Getting Only Important Alerts
Sometimes you don’t need constant directions, just a heads-up about big issues. You can set Apple Maps to only give you warnings about incidents. This means no voice for every turn, but you’ll still hear about road dangers or other important alerts.
To set this up:
- Begin a route in Apple Maps.
- Tap the navigation map on your iPhone or CarPlay screen.
- Find the speaker icon on the right.
- Tap it and pick the middle button (it looks like a speaker with a warning triangle).
The first time you select this option, you’ll hear a quick explanation. It confirms you’ll only get relevant alerts moving forward.
Changing the Navigation Voice
If you simply want a different voice for your directions, you can adjust this through Siri’s settings.
Just go to Settings > Siri & Search > Siri Voice and pick the voice you like best.
Keep in mind, the language for your navigation will always match the language set on your iPhone. Then, the Siri voice you choose will speak in that selected language. For example, you cannot set your iPhone to English but have navigation spoken in Portuguese.
Other Handy Voice Options
Your iPhone settings offer even more ways to fine-tune spoken directions in Apple Maps.
For instance, you can:
- Pause podcasts or audiobooks whenever directions are spoken. This way, you never miss a word of your audio.
- Automatically wake your iPhone screen when a new direction is about to be given.
- Have directions play directly through your car radio, if your car supports it.
To find these helpful options, head to Settings > Maps > Spoken Directions. From there, you can activate the features that make your drive smoother.