I made a video about a month ago where I showed you 10 things you could do with
Siri that you might not have known about, and that video was extremely well received,
I’ll link to it in the description of this video. But, there are still some really useful things
that Siri can do, that I didn’t include in that video. So, in this video, I’m going to cover
10 more things. Stick with me to the end of the video, I definitely think there are going to be a
couple in here that most people won’t be aware of. OK, let’s get into it.
We’ll start off with a couple of location based tips, which can be super handy if
you’re somewhere unfamiliar, and the first is using Siri to find your car.
Now, for this to work, you have to either have a car that connects to your iPhone using CarPlay,
or a stereo that connects to your phone using Bluetooth, but honestly, most cars from the
last decade or so have a stereo with some form of bluetooth connectivity, so this tip should be
something that most people can make use of. This is because the stereo needs to connect
to your phone whilst you’re driving, so that it knows when you’ve come to the end of your journey,
and powered off your engine. You don’t have to use your phone for music while you’re driving
or anything like that, you just need the stereo and the phone to be able to make a connection,
which they should do automatically when you get in the car, once you’ve paired them.
Your phone and the stereo use bluetooth low-energy pairing to establish that,
once you power off your engine, and the bluetooth connection is therefore lost,
that most likely means that your current location is where you’ve parked your car,
and your phone makes a note of this for you automatically, just in case you need it.
Then, when you’re finished for the day and want to get back to your car, just ask Siri,
‘where’s my car’, and it will locate your car on your Maps app for you. You can then
tap the directions button, and Siri will guide you right to it. If you’ve got a newer iPhone,
you can get really precise with this, which is helpful if you’re parked in a large carpark, and
you need some help pinpointing the exact location. There are a few settings you’ll need to ensure
are switched on, in order for this to work, so let me show you. First, open Settings,
then Maps, and ensure that Show Parked Location is toggled on. Then go to Settings, then Privacy,
then Location Services, then Maps, and ensure that location access is allowed ‘while using the app’,
and if you’ve got it, also ensure that precise location is toggled on.
Then back a page to Location Services, scroll right the way down to System Services, and
ensure that Significant Locations is toggled on. Oh, and you would use essentially the same command
to find things like your keys, if you use an AirTag, you would just say “where are my keys?”,
and your phone will ping the AirTag, and come back to you with a location.
Following the location theme, this one is extremely useful if you find yourself in
a location that you’re unfamiliar with, and you need to quickly work out exactly where
you are. Just ask Siri, ‘where am I?’, and Siri will give you a wealth of useful information.
It will of course give you your current address, or the address closest to you, but it will also
give you a map view, and your GPS coordinates down at the bottom, helpful if you need to pass this
kind of information on to the emergency services. And up at the top, there’s a share button,
which you can use to send all of this information to someone else, which again is helpful if you,
or someone you’re trying to help, needs this kind of information in an emergency,
I genuinely think this tip has the potential to be a lifesaver in certain situations.
A comment that I often get on my videos is that people find out these tips,
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A slightly more lighthearted example now, but I still wanted to include it, if you’re
ever struggling to make a decision, you can have Siri flip a coin for you. Just say, Flip a coin.
Or if Magic 8 Ball is more your thing, just say “8 Ball”.
Or if you’re trying to play a board game that needs a dice but you’ve lost the dice,
just ask Siri to roll a dice for you, by saying, roll a dice.
You can use Siri for conversions, and you can do this with a range of different things.
Let’s say you’re trying to organise a Zoom call, but you’ve got people
joining from all over the world, and you want to work out what the time is right
now somewhere else in the world, just ask Siri. So you might ask, ‘what’s the time in Tokyo?’,
and you’ll get an answer. Or, let’s say you’re cooking,
and the recipe that you’re working with wants you to use 1 pound of ground beef,
but you’d prefer to operate in grams. You could just say to Siri, convert 1ib into grams.
Or, if you’re dealing with a piece of furniture that you know is 60 inches long, but you need
to know that measurement in centimetres, just say to Siri, convert 60 inches to centimetres.
A few more for you, just to really wrap this bit up. You could say;
Convert 80 km per hour to miles per hour.
Or you could say, convert 300 euros to dollars. Or you could say, how many gallons is 22 litres?
Or you could say, what’s 30 degrees celsius in farenheit?
This tip is potentially quite useful for anyone with an iPhone 13 or any iPhone that
doesn’t display the battery percentage on the Home Screen. You probably already know that,
if you want to view the battery percentage, you can swipe to the Control Centre and it
will show here. But if you’re not a fan of that, or if you find that difficult to view,
you can ask Siri how much battery you have remaining. You would simply say, ‘how much battery
do I have left?’, and it will let you know. Bonus tip here, if you find the Control Centre
view difficult to view, swipe left until you get to this screen, then tap Edit.
Tap the plus icon in the upper left of the screen, and scroll down to Batteries. You can then add a
battery widget, which you could either have on this screen here, or you could even add it your
iPhone’s Home Screen if you wish, whatever works best for you. If you’re like me, and you also have
an Apple Watch, perhaps some AirPods, this will also show the battery level of those devices.
One of the best features of the newer iPhone OS, in my opinion, is the ability to hide apps
and have them only show in the App Gallery, it really helps clear clutter from your screen. One
downside to this is that, sometimes, you’re going to want to open an app that you haven’t opened
in a while, and you might struggle to find it. Now, you could of course swipe down on your screen
and use Spotlight search to locate the app. But if you’d prefer, you can use Siri. Just access it
and ask it to open the relevant app. For example, ‘Open Headphones’. And the app opens.
Or, open iTunes. Or, open Settings.
Or, open the Camera.
Oh, and another little bonus tip for you, did you know about this?
Open Measure. Your iPhone, provided it’s compatible has
this measurement app built into it, which you can use to, as the name suggests, measure things. And
if you tap the Level button down at the bottom, you can even use your iPhone as a spirit level.
You can send links to people, using Siri, and you can do so via different messaging apps.
So let’s say for example, I’m on the web and I see this page, and I want to send it to my
friend John Smith. I would just activate Siri and say, send this to John Smith.
And you can see that it creates an iOS message, complete with the link, and a space for me to
input some of my own text, to send to John. Now, Messages is really popular in the US,
but not so much here in the UK, here WhatsApp is unfortunately kind of
king. So, what I could say instead is, “Send this to John Smith via WhatsApp”.
And the same thing will happen, but using WhatsApp instead.
Now, this works across lots of different parts of iOS, but in general, if a link can’t be sent
for whatever you’re trying to send, your iPhone will instead attempt to create a full-screen
screenshot of whatever you’re looking at, and send that instead, which is still pretty useful.
I’ve included this feature in a bunch of my other videos over the past year, but I’m still going to
include it here because it is a Siri feature, and it is enormously helpful. You can use Siri,
while you’re going about your day to day life at home, to help you build a constantly updated
shopping list, so that when you go to the shops, or when you do your online shop, you know exactly
what to buy and don’t have to create a new list. First up, head to Reminders,
and create a list, and call it Shopping. Then, any time that you notice that you’re running
low on something at home, just activate Siri and ask it to add the item to your shopping list.
So for example, “add milk to my shopping list”. And it will add
that item straight into your shopping list. An extra bonus tip is that if you live with
someone else, you can share that shopping list with them. From reminders, you simply tap the
menu item up in the top right and choose Share, then choose who you want to share that list with.
I’ve already shared this list, so I don’t have that option, I can instead manage the shared
options of the list, but once you’ve done this, you can both add items to the list, and you can
both access the list when you’re out and about, removing items from it as you go around the store.
Your control centre gives you access to a number of controls, things like enabling or disabling
Wifi, or bluetooth, or switching on things like Focus mode, which is where you can have the phone
setup so that you can focus during your working day. There’s toggle switches for the various
things within control centre, but you can also toggle most of these things on and off using Siri.
For example, if you say “turn off wifi”, Siri will turn off your Wifi. If you say “turn off
bluetooth”, it will turn off your bluetooth. Siri can turn on your work focus mode,
but it’s a bit of an odd command to get it to work, in my opinion at least.
You would have to say “enable work mode”, and Siri will enable your work focus mode.
Look, I said at the start of this video that I’m including things that Siri can do that are
genuinely useful, and for some people, this will be genuinely useful. I’m not sure who,
but some people. In fact if you find this final tip useful, drop me a comment and let me know why.
Siri can tell you what things sound like.
So for example, you might say, “what does an Emu sound like?”
Or you might ask, what does a cuckoo sound like? Or, what does a hippo sound like?
I’ve also got this to work for things like a car or a helicopter. It works really well with
animals, not so much with other things, but if you find any good ones, leave a comment about them.
I guess if you’ve got kids and you want to help educate them about animals,
this feature could be really fun, but like I say, if you like this, let me know why.
So there you go, 10 more tips to help you get more out of Siri on your iPhone.
Any good tips that I’ve not mentioned in this video, or in my previous video?
Drop me a comment and let me know, and remember to check that other video out if you haven’t already,
I’ll link to it in the description. And as ever, if you found this video useful,
do please consider leaving me a like, and subscribing to my channel for more content
like this in the future. See you on the next video.