Toyota is arguably one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world. Asides from the quality of their cars and attractive designs, they also infuse amazing tech to ensure a smoother driving experience. One such tech is the “voice recognition” infused in Toyota RAV 4 and other recent Toyota vehicles.
This feature is known as “Toyota Entune 3.0.” It allows you to make calls, switch to new radio stations, and even listen to podcasts while driving. All you need to do is “say the words.”
What do you do when your Toyota RAV4 Voice Recognition not available? Should you be worried? Is it fixable? No, you shouldn’t be worried because you can solve this problem easily. In this post, we will teach you how to activate and troubleshoot your RAV4’s voice recognition feature.
A brief on the Toyota Entune 3.0
Before we go ahead to troubleshoot your car’s voice recognition, let’s provide you with a background to this amazing feature. You must have heard of many modern cars coming with Android Auto or Apple CarPlay installed. While both are great features, Toyota is offering neither. Instead, the company developed a similar system known as “Toyota Entune App Suite.”
This suite ensures that drivers can connect their devices to the car’s infotainment system to keep them and their passengers entertained. The connection is established via several methods, most notably Siri Eyes Free Tech and Bluetooth connections. Now that you have a clear background of this application, let’s discuss what to do when it isn’t available.
Toyota RAV4 Voice Recognition Not Available: Possible Reasons and How to fix
You just noticed that the voice recognition feature in your RAV4 is not working. This should be a cause for concern especially when you aren’t sure why it isn’t available at the moment. The truth is that there are several reasons why this feature could stop working. In this section, we will discuss the most common reasons for the failure of voice recognition. We will also show you how to solve the problem easily.
Voice recognition not activated
If you only recently bought your Toyota RAV4, congratulations. You should know that the “voice recognition” feature does not come activated by default. If your dealer has not activated this feature, then you will likely think that it is not available.
As long as you are using one of the more recent versions of your car, it should come with voice recognition. Even before Toyota put Entune 3.0 on the market, it had developed the voice recognition feature. Activating this feature is pretty easy. Let’s show you how to do this in the steps below:
Step 1 – Look at your steering wheel and locate the “talk” button.
Step 2 – Make a short press on this button. You can let go of the button once you hear a beep.
Step 3 – Say a command to activate the feature.
If you will like to deactivate the feature, take the following steps:
Step 1 – Press down the “talk” button once again.
Step 2 – Say “cancel.” This command will automatically end voice recognition.
This way, you can always activate and deactivate voice recognition in your RAV4 at will. What if you try this and you don’t get any results, there could be another problem.
Bluetooth not connected
As we mentioned earlier, one of the ways to connect your smartphone to your car’s voice recognition is via Bluetooth. If the device is not connected, then you cannot operate it using the voice recognition feature. There are several reasons why your device is not connected to the car’s Bluetooth system. A few of them include:
- The Bluetooth on your device is disabled. In this case, you should simply activate the Bluetooth on the device and try to connect.
- Your device is connected to another Bluetooth. Check your device to see that it is not connected to another device. If it is, disconnect it and try connecting it to your car. This time, it should work.
- The device is not discoverable. You should check this when you notice that your device’s Bluetooth is on and not connected to another device. Check the Bluetooth settings on the device to see if it is discoverable or not. If it isn’t, simply toggle on the button.
- Your car’s Bluetooth is not activated. If you have tried everything above and the Bluetooth is still not connected, then maybe the Bluetooth is not activated. Here is how to activate your RAV4’s Bluetooth:
- Go to “menu” on your car’s multimedia screen.
- Tap on setup.
- Select Bluetooth and go to detailed settings. Here, you can find out if the Bluetooth is on or not. If it isn’t, simply switch it on and try to connect your device again.
To connect your device to your Bluetooth, take these steps:
- Select Bluetooth on your car’s multimedia faceplate.
- Tap on “Add.”
- Select your device and it should connect immediately.
Sound system not working
What if your sound system is completely down? It could be that you are having a fuse or electrical wiring issue. You can easily know if a fuse is bad by checking the associated fuse in the fuse box. If it is damaged, replace the fuse and the system should be back up. However, if after changing the fuse, the system isn’t working, then you have a wiring issue. Speak to your mechanic to help you with this.
Wrong commands
One of the major reasons why your voice recognition system may come across as unavailable is using the wrong commands. Here are the major commands that you can use:
- Cancel
- Display Clock
- Display Off
- Go Back
- Help
- Main Menu
- Next
- Page Down or Page Up
- Pause
- Previous
- Resume
- Select
- Yes or No
To access more specialized commands, click here.
Conclusion
Now, you know why your Toyota RAV4 voice recognition is not available. If you try all of these and nothing seems to work, reach out to your dealer or the nearest Toyota shop for help.
