Speak to Siri

Siri is your voice-activated personal assistant, capable of making phone calls, playing music, reading your email messages, telling you if it’s going to rain, and even booking restaurant reservations. In iOS 11, Siri gets a new look, new voices, greater iOS integration, the option to edit queries, and some other great features.

Summon Siri

There are two ways to summon Siri. First, there’s the old-fashioned way using the Home button:

1. Hold down the Home button. When you feel two vibrations or hear a chime and see multicolored wavy lines at the bottom of the screen, Siri is listening.
2. Release the Home button.
3. Speak. Say something like, “Siri, what’s it like being you?”
4. Be quiet.

Personally, I prefer the voice-activated Hey Siri, which you can enable in Settings > Siri & Search > Listen for “Hey Siri”. All iOS 11 devices can use Hey Siri, but unless you’re using an iPhone 6s or later, an iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd generation), an iPad Pro (10.5-inch), or an iPad Pro (9.7-inch), your device has to be connected to power for Hey Siri to work.

To use Hey Siri, just say, “Hey Siri” and speak your query—there’s no need to wait for Siri to activate.

Edit Siri Queries

If Siri misunderstands you, you can fix that. After speaking a query, tap Tap to Edit to edit your query with the keyboard. Siri also presents suggestions of what it think you might have meant to say (Figure 35). Simply delete the incorrect text and replace it with what you meant. In theory, this helps Siri understand you better.

Set Up Siri

In addition to Hey Siri, there are other important settings to check in Settings > Siri & Search:

• Enable or disable Siri: You can disable Siri entirely by turning off Press for Siri.
• Your spoken language: Tap Language to select the language that you want to speak to Siri with. Generally, you should choose the language you are most fluent in, but this is also a fun way to practice speaking in a foreign language.
• Siri’s accent and gender: Tap Siri Voice. Depending on the selected language, you may see accent options. Tap the accent that you want to hear when Siri speaks. You can also choose a male or female voice for Siri here.
• Voice Feedback: If you’re tired of Siri’s backtalk, tap Voice Feedback, and then select Control with Ring Switch (or Control with Mute Setting) to disable Siri’s voice when Mute is enabled.
• Introducing yourself: You can tell Siri, “Take me home” to get directions to your residence, but first, Siri must know who you are. Tap My Info and then pick your contact entry from the list. If you don’t have one, make one in the Contacts app.

  To check who Siri thinks you are, you can ask “Who am I?”

Teach Siri About Your Relationships

Siri lets you refer to people by relationship. For example, I can tell Siri to “call my wife” instead of “call Hannah Centers.” You can teach Siri the identity of most of your family members and other important people in your life.

To set this up, make sure you have a card for the person in the Contacts app. Then do one of the following:

• Tell Siri: Invoke Siri and tell her about the relationship. For example, I can say, “Hannah Centers is my wife”; after confirmation, that relationship is set. You can check this with Siri later with queries like “Who is my wife,” and “Who is my boss?”
• Tell the Contacts app: Open your card in Contacts, tap Edit in the upper-right corner, scroll down, tap “add related name,” tap the default relationship to pick the desired relationship, tap the info icon, and select the person’s card. Tap Done.

Learn Some Useful Siri Commands

Siri understands more commands than I can list here, and not every Siri command is the most efficient way to complete a task. Here are some of the ones I’ve found to be useful:

• Identify songs: While a song is playing, activate Siri and ask what song is playing. If Siri finds a match, you see the name of the song, the artist, and a button to buy the song in the iTunes Store. If you subscribe to Apple Music, you can play the entire song right there.
• Make phone calls: You can use Siri to place phone calls, which is especially handy while driving. Just say “Call contact’s name” to initiate a call (if your contact has multiple phone numbers, Siri will ask you which one to call—or you can preempt that step by saying “Call Jane Smith’s iPhone.”). If you’ve configured relationships, as explained above, you can instead say, “Call my mom,” or “Call my spouse.”
• Remind me to…: You can tell Siri to remind you of things, like “Remind me to take the trash out Tuesday night,” but what I’ve found even more useful is telling Siri to remind me to do a task when I reach or leave a destination. For example, “Remind me to change the cat litter when I get home,” or “Remind me to pick up diapers when I leave.”
• Remind me of “this”: Siri can create contextual reminders for Safari webpages, Mail messages, Maps locations, and more. Tell Siri, “Remind me about this,” while looking at a relevant item.
• Search photos and videos: You can use Siri to search for photos and videos by time or location. For example: “Show me photos from San Francisco,” or “Show me videos from Christmas 2015.” Photos in iOS 11 recognizes objects, so you can say something like, “Show me pictures of water.”
• Set an alarm: There are several ways to set an alarm. You can say, “Set an alarm for 6 AM” before bed. Or when you lie down for a nap, you can say, “Wake me in 30 minutes.” You can also say, “Delete my alarm,” to view a list of alarms to delete.
• Set a timer: I use this all the time in the kitchen. Tell Siri to set a timer for however many hours, minutes, or seconds you need. For example, “Set a timer for 5 minutes.”
• Find sports info: I’ve found that Siri is the fastest way to find out things like “When do the Braves play next,” “What time is the Mavericks game,” and “How many touchdowns did Marcus Mariota throw last season?”

Use Third-party Apps with Siri

App developers can hook their apps into Siri, but only for a few types of apps. Here are some examples of what you can say:

• Messaging: “Send a text to Jill using Slack.”
• Ride booking: “Get me a ride to LAX via Lyft.”
• Payments: “Send $30 to Duane for dinner last night using Square Cash.”
• Photo search: “Look for beach photos taken last winter in Pinterest.”
• Visual codes: Siri in iOS 11 can be asked to scan and display visual codes like QR codes.
• VoIP calling: “Call Marcus on Skype.”
• Workouts: “Start my daily run workout from Runkeeper.”

There are also a couple of other ways developers can integrate with Siri:

• CarPlay: Automakers can create Siri commands to adjust things like climate control, radio, and seats on CarPlay-equipped vehicles.
• Lists and notes: In iOS 11, Siri can now modify lists, like to-do lists, and create and modify notes in apps.

Apps That Already Work with Siri

Long before Apple opened Siri up to any developer, the voice assistant worked with a few select third-party apps, and still does:

• MLB.com At Bat: Siri can give you baseball schedules and stats. Ask for things like, “When is the next Yankees game?” If you have the MLB.com At Bat app installed, you can summon more details, like player stats.
• WolframAlpha Viewer: Siri can call upon WolframAlpha to answer complex mathematical questions, like “What is the square root of 65?” With the free WolframAlpha Viewer app installed, you can see additional details about your question.
• Yahoo Sports: Out of the box, Siri has access to all kinds of fun sports knowledge. You can ask, “When is the next NFL game?” or “Who is taller: Steph Curry or LeBron?” If the free Yahoo Sports app is installed, you can even tap the Yahoo logo to open the app for more info.