Hands-free listening with Siri and the lock screen
Control Yomite hands-free: Siri and App Intents, Quick Actions, Action Button, lock-screen controls and the chapter-based sleep timer.
To control Yomite without looking at your phone, combine the lock-screen playback controls with Siri. Saying “Resume Yomite” starts playback where you stopped, and pause and chapter skipping work from the lock screen. With chapters playing through automatically and a sleep timer that counts chapters, you barely need to touch anything while you listen.
Related use case: Accessibility
One hand on the dog leash, the other full of grocery bags. Or both hands buried in a mixing bowl. You want to skip to the next chapter, or just resume playback — but pulling out your phone, unlocking it, and opening the app feels like too many steps for such a small ask.
Yomite has several ways to keep listening without looking at, or even touching, your screen. Here’s each one, paired with the moment it actually helps.
What can I do with Siri?
Yomite supports Siri and App Intents, so a command like “Resume Yomite” works as a spoken command (chapter skipping is on the Lock Screen controls). When your hands are genuinely occupied, saying a phrase is faster than reaching for your phone at all.
This is small but effective in exactly the moments described above — cooking with one eye on a recipe, standing at the door with keys and bags in both hands, anywhere the extra step of unlocking a screen is the actual friction.
Can I control it without opening the app?
For a quicker touch than opening the app fully, Yomite supports Home Screen Quick Actions and the lock-screen Action Button. Neither requires you to stare at the screen and tap precisely — a press is enough to trigger playback control.
Both reduce how much you need to look directly at the screen to act, which matters while walking or pushing a bike — situations where staring at a phone screen isn’t something you want to do anyway.
How much works from the lock screen?
Yomite can be controlled from the lock screen, the Live Activity in the Dynamic Island shows which chapter is playing, and background playback stays stable — so you can leave your phone in your pocket and keep listening without ever looking at the screen.
Keeping a phone screen lit on a train draws battery and, sometimes, attention you’d rather not draw. If pause, resume, and skip-chapter all work from the lock screen, the only real reason to wake the screen is to change the voice or the volume.
Do I have to do anything at the end of each chapter?
For long listening sessions, chapters play through automatically: a 440Hz chime plays at the chapter break, followed by a 1.5-second cancel window (an Audible-style pause) before the next chapter starts. You don’t have to touch anything at each chapter boundary.
What if I fall asleep while listening?
If you’re listening in bed and might drift off, the sleep timer helps — it can be set by chapter count rather than by the clock, so you can say “stop after two more chapters” instead of guessing a number of minutes. Playback stops on its own at a clean break, with no need to check the time on a lit screen.
How do I add an article to listen to later?
Found something worth listening to later? You can add it to Yomite straight from Safari, Mail, or any other app’s Share Sheet — tap “Add to Yomite” and the URL or article text lands in your library without switching apps and hunting for the right tab.
From there, a Siri command like “Resume Yomite” is enough to start listening on the spot. It cuts down the back-and-forth between your browser and the app itself.
Can I resume without opening my library?
Yomite’s library screen has a hero card showing the last book, chapter, and progress you listened to. One tap resumes exactly where you left off, and Siri surfaces the same suggestion — no need to hunt through your library for the right title and chapter.
Where this actually gets used
- Cooking, with both hands busy
- Walking a dog or carrying groceries, when reaching for your phone is awkward
- Commuting on foot or by train, when you’d rather not light up the screen
- Right before sleep, when you don’t want to look at a lit screen (the sleep timer stops playback on its own)
Does hands-free control send my text anywhere?
Whether you’re issuing a Siri command or tapping a lock-screen control, Yomite’s speech synthesis itself runs entirely on your device. None of the text you’ve imported is sent to an external server — hands-free control doesn’t change that.
— Yomite Team
Related: Reading by Ear — a Guide for Visual Fatigue and Dyslexia · Year in Review: your listening stats in Yomite