Microsoft Releases 'Play My Emails' Text-to-Speech Feature for Cortana in the iOS Outlook App - MacRumors
Skip to Content

Microsoft Releases 'Play My Emails' Text-to-Speech Feature for Cortana in the iOS Outlook App

by

Alongside a slate of announcements made this morning, Microsoft has launched a new text-to-speech feature for Cortana in the Outlook app for iOS devices. With this feature, called "Play My Emails," the Outlook app uses Cortana's natural language interactions and AI to read out your latest emails.

cortana emails
Microsoft is aiming this feature at users who want to catch up on their inboxes while doing something else, like driving or working at their desks. Cortana starts by summarizing how many emails are new in the user's Focused Inbox in the last 24 hours, and if there have been any changes to their upcoming daily schedule, thanks to integration with Outlook's calendar.


Cortana also uses Microsoft Graph to identity the sender of each email in relationship to the user, so it's easier to know the context of the message without looking at the screen. Because of these abilities and more, Microsoft said that Play My Emails is more than just a text-to-speech update, but a way to have a natural conversation with Cortana.

Cortana synthesizes the information in the message header and meta data and marries it with the insights about you and information from apps and services that power Office 365. This provides a more meaningful and contextual readout.

The Play My Emails experience is like having a conversation with your personal assistant.

Play My Emails is launching today to customers in the United States for the Outlook app on iOS devices, and later it will launch on Android.

Top Rated Comments

83 months ago
MS killing is here adding useful stuff to Outlook every few weeks. Making the broken iOS Mail app look really bad right now after months of no fixes somehow
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
83 months ago

What is broken in Mail? Please list 3 things.

"Play" My Emails is strange language. Why not "Read My Emails", "Review My Emails", or "Check My Email"?

Apple is moving slowly in some areas. Too slowly.
You clearly arent a newb, so try searching. Many threads on Macrumors like

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-13-native-mail-app.2205325/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-13-2-mail-app-freezing-after-search.2209344/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mail-rarely-pushing-to-iphone.2208101/


and even some in the Apple official forums too https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250795626

Hell just search the site for the word "mail" in the search box and see how many Maill app issues pop up

HUNDREDS of posts of issues in the above thread and general iOS 13 threads; Im not going to spend my time rattling them off but- no notifications for Exchange accounts, double sent mails entries showing for exchange, mail not updating until opening app.

Exchange and the stock Mail app has a host of known issues, see the chart someone in the above thread made https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-13-native-mail-app.2205325/page-2?post=27898725#post-27898725

HUGE usability bugs in general with the core functions of an email app not even nitpicking the small stuff like my the email functions (reply, forward, archive, ove) that were perfectly fine across the bottom bar over 12 OS versions are now buried in a submenu now with only delete and the bottons are right next to each other where one can accidentally delete an email https://www.cultofmac.com/661624/mail-app-trash-can-ios-13/

Denial isnt just a river in Egypt.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
83 months ago
No Canada ?
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jmh600cbr Avatar
83 months ago
Siri needs this with CarPlay
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
gplusplus Avatar
83 months ago
If only I could change the default email client on my $1,100.00 device.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ThisisAdar Avatar
83 months ago
Microsoft taking swings at Google like Paquaio did against Mayweather. In the end us consumers win from this. 🤷🏽‍♂️
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iPhone 18 Pro Deep Red Feature

iPhone 18 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 12 New Features

Wednesday March 18, 2026 7:39 am PDT by
While the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are not expected to launch for another six months or so, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. It was initially reported that the iPhone 18 Pro models would have fully under-screen Face ID, with only a front camera visible in the top-left corner of the screen. However, the latest rumors indicate that only one Face ID component...
imac video apple feature

Apple Released Yet Another New Product Today

Friday March 20, 2026 2:39 pm PDT by
Apple has unveiled a whopping nine new products so far this March, including an iPhone 17e, iPad Air models with the M4 chip, MacBook Air models with the M5 chip, MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, the all-new MacBook Neo, an updated Studio Display, a higher-end Studio Display XDR, AirPods Max 2, and now the Nike Powerbeats Pro 2. iPhone 17e features the same overall design as...
ios 26 4 yellow

Here Are Apple's Release Notes for iOS 26.4

Wednesday March 18, 2026 11:56 am PDT by
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate versions of iOS 26.4 and iPadOS 26.4, which means we're going to see a public launch as soon as next week. The RC versions of the software include Apple's official release notes, giving us final details on what's included in the update. Apple Music - Playlist Playground (beta) generates a playlist from your...