The embodiments provided herein are directed to a system and method of message-triggered voice command interface in portable electronic devices. The voice command interface is normally not activated until a message (e.g., an e-mail, a text message, or a voice mail) has been received by a portable electronic device. The arriving of a message is used to trigger the voice command interface by activating one or more speech recognition routines in a predetermined time period corresponding to the one or more speech recognition routines. The voice command interface come to an end when the predetermined time period expires or the user has no further commands.