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

Monday November 4, 2019 7:05 AM PST by Mitchel Broussard
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.


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.

Tags: Microsoft, Cortana, Microsoft Outlook
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jk1211
2 weeks 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
Rating: 2 Votes
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jmh600cbr
2 weeks ago
Siri needs this with CarPlay
Rating: 1 Votes
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ThisisAdar
2 weeks ago
Microsoft taking swings at Google like Paquaio did against Mayweather. In the end us consumers win from this. ??‍♂️
Rating: 1 Votes
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Peepo
2 weeks ago
No Canada ?
Rating: 1 Votes
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jk1211
2 weeks ago


What is broken in Mail? Please list 3 things.
[automerge]1572895176[/automerge]
"Play" My Emails is strange language. Why not "Read My Emails", "Review My Emails", or "Check My Email"?
[automerge]1572895222[/automerge]
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/
[URL unfurl="true"]https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-13-2-mail-app-freezing-after-search.2209344/[/URL]
[URL unfurl="true"]https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mail-rarely-pushing-to-iphone.2208101/[/URL]


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.
Rating: 1 Votes
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gplusplus
2 weeks ago
If only I could change the default email client on my $1,100.00 device.
Rating: 1 Votes
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