Intro; I’ve made quite a bit of content about Siri here
on the channel, and I’m very aware that it lags behind a lot of the voice assistant competition,
especially as AI is starting to become more widely adopted, but for better or worse, Siri is the tool
that over 1.3 billion of us have access to, so we might as well try and get the most out of it.
And that’s what I’m going to try and do in this video, as I share with you
12 genuinely useful Siri commands, that I reckon you might not know. Stick with me
until the end of this video to see what your voice assistant can do, oh and make
sure that you’re running iOS 16.4.1 or newer to ensure you can do everything that we discuss.
OK, let’s get into it.
Send a voice note to; Sending text messages
to people is useful, and I’m sure you know how to do that on Siri already,
but there are going to be times where it’s much easier for you to send a voice note to someone,
and you can do that with Siri. This only works with iMessage to the best of my knowledge,
and here’s how you’d do it. So if I want to send my friend Tim Apple a voice note
I would activate my voice assistant and say ‘Send a voice note to Tim Apple’.
Hey Tim, how’s it going? Just wanted to send you a quick voice message,
so that everyone watching this video could see how it works.
You can then either listen to the voice note, or send it, all without having to touch your
phone. The person who receives it at the other end will be able to listen to it, and it will
default to disappear after 2 minutes, although the recipient can choose to keep it if they wish.
Find Emails You no doubt already
know that you can use Siri to send emails, but you might not know that you can also use Siri
to quickly locate emails, and you can do this using a number of different options. For example,
if I wanted to find all the emails sent to me by Tim Apple, I would say “show me emails by
Tim Apple”. Note that you don’t have to have the mail app open for this to work.
I could also say something like “show me all the emails I received yesterday”, and your
voice assistant will show you them. You could say “show me my unread emails”, and your phone will
show you any new emails. You can ask to see emails from a specific date, which is helpful if someone
is for example telling you that they sent you something and you’re struggling to locate it, just
say “show me emails received on the 6th April” for example, and all your emails will be shown to you.
Show passwords Passwords are in general, best stored in a secure
part of your phone like iCloud Keychain, where you can only access them using your phone’s passcode,
or better yet Touch ID or Face ID, but there are going to be times where you’ll need to view those
passwords, maybe because you’re logging in on a non-Apple device. You can of course get to your
passwords by going into Settings and getting them from there, but easier still is to use Siri and
ask it to show you the specific password you want. So I might say for example, “show me my Discord
password”, and Siri will first verify that it’s me, and then show me the information. The nice
thing here is that you do have to actually tap on the password to view it. If you have multiple
passwords for something, Siri will show you all of them, and you simply pick the one that you want.
So if I were to say “show me my Google passwords” for example, that’s how this would work.
PIA Integration Before we continue, a quick word about
the sponsor of today’s video, Private Internet Access. One of the downsides of Siri is that
it needs an internet connection for you to get the most out of it, which means that wherever you are,
you’re going to need to have your phone online. And if you’re someone who relies on public wifi,
the kind that you get in coffee shops, airports and shopping malls for example,
you’re transmitting a LOT of sensitive data across a totally unencrypted network. A VPN, like the one
provided by PIA, hides that data by running it through their world class server infrastructure,
giving you peace of mind that your browsing activity remains seen by you and you alone. And
that’s actually one of the main reasons why I keep recommending PIA here on the channel - they have
a no-log policy that they’ve defended in court, which basically means that they don’t store any
browsing data about you. It’s great for use when you’re trying to get some work done on the go,
but it’s also excellent if you’re the type of person who likes to browse and stream content
from different regions, as you can change your IP address to one of 84 different countries, as well
as all 50 US states. And their latest feature is the ability to use your one subscription for your
entire household on all of your devices, so if you’re like me and you’ve got multiple phones,
tablets and computers, you don’t need to worry about running out of licenses. Sign up through
the link in the description of this video, to get 86% off, plus 4 months for free, so it
ends up at only £1.57 a month, and thanks again to Private Internet Access for sponsoring this video.
View the hourly weather Siri is good for finding
out about the weather, but it doesn’t always give you the kind of detail that you want. For example,
if I say “what’s the weather going to be like in Canterbury today”,
it will give me a summary view of what the weather is going to be like. But if you
say instead, “show me the hourly weather for Canterbury”, you’ll get a much more detailed,
hour-by-hour view of what’s going on, which is of course useful if you’re planning your day.
Interestingly, from an accessibility perspective,
although the visual information will always be the same no matter what you ask for,
you can change what Siri says to you by asking for something more specific. So for example,
if I say “show me the hourly rain forecast for Canterbury”, Siri will say…
But if I say “show me the hourly temperature forecast for Canterbury”, Siri will say…
How do you say? Being able to communicate
effectively with people makes life easier, and as your phone is always in your pocket, it’s good to
know that you can use Siri to translate when you need to. The command that you would use to make
this happen is “how do you say”. So for example, if I wanted to ask for directions to the restroom
in Turkish, I would say “how do you say, ‘please can you direct me to the restroom’ in Turkish?”
Your phone will not only show you the text on screen, it will also speak the phrase out,
so if you’re asking for help, you could hold the phone out to let the other person direct you.
Also, not a Siri feature, but worth remembering, your iPhone does have a Translate app built in,
which you can use to have conversations with people, with your phone translating as you go.
PDF Shoutout By the way, if you
prefer to have content like this in a written format, there’s a PDF to accompany this video,
and you can access it by joining my membership programme, where for a small monthly fee,
you’ll get access to all video PDFs moving forward, plus the growing library of old
ones. Just follow the link in the description of this video that says ‘Become a Channel Member’.
Call someone on Speaker You no doubt know that you can use Siri
to call someone, you’d just say “call so-and-so” and Siri will do it for you, and since iOS16,
you can even use Siri to hang up the call by activating Siri and saying “hang up” at the end of
the call. But if you’re needing to use your phone hands free, it’s a pain having Siri call someone,
and then having to switch that call to speaker. You can manage the entire thing if you ask Siri
to make the call correctly for you. So if I were to say “call Tim Apple on speaker”,
my phone would not only make the call, but it would route it straight to the speaker for me.
Where’s my? If you use Find My on
your Apple devices, and you should by the way, you can quickly locate your various different items,
things like your phone, your AirPods, your Macbook, your Watch etc, and you can do so
using the Find My app. If you have an AirTag, the list of items you can track grows even further,
I use AirTags to track my keys, my wallet, my suitcase and my backpack.
Siri makes it super easy to find them, without you having to head into the App. Simply activate
Siri and say “where’s my wallet” for example, and your phone will search for it. If it can
find it nearby you, it will play a sound and let you know that it’s nearby, so you can
quickly locate it. If it’s further away, or if it can’t find it, it will let you know where it
was last time it was visible, and you can open the Find My app to look for it in more detail.
Oh and a bit of a bonus tip, if you use CarPlay or if you connect your phone via Bluetooth to your
car stereo, you can go into Settings and Maps, and then ensure that Show Parked Location is toggled
on. That way, when you exit your car, you can say “where’s my car”, and Siri will help you navigate
back to it. Helpful if you’ve parked somewhere in a place that you don’t know very well.
Share Location Another useful Siri
tip when it comes to location is to use Siri to share your location with another person.
This can be extremely useful if you’re trying to describe where you are to a trusted person,
and rather than trying to navigate them to you, you could simply access Siri and say “share my
location with Tom PHT” in my case for example. Your location will appear as a snippet on screen,
and you can add a note or comment to it before you send it, but otherwise it will be sent as an
iMessage to the contact you mentioned. They’ll receive it as a Maps snippet at their end,
and can simply tap on that snippet to then use Maps to navigate them to you.
Also, a little bonus tip for this feature, if you access Siri and say “where am I?”,
Siri will give you the closest address that it can find for you, which would include GPS
coordinates if you scroll down a little. Again, super helpful if you ever find yourself in a
place that you’re unfamiliar with, and you need to quickly figure out where you are.
Take a screenshot and share it with… Ever had a strange message or error
appear on your screen and wanted to send it to someone so they could advise you about it? You
could take a screenshot, and then locate the screenshot and then send the screenshot… but
it’s very easy to do this in one simple step using Siri. Simply access it and say “take a
screenshot and send it to Tom PHT” for example, and Siri will immediately take
a screenshot, and put it into an iMessage, ready for you to send it. Quick and easy.
Figure out a tip Tipping culture isn’t as
big here in the UK as it is in the US, but I do know that there are going to be times
where you might need to quickly work out a tip, and if it’s anything other than 10%,
that quick math could be a bit tricky, so you could use Siri to figure it out
for you. Let’s say we’ve got a $48 bill, and we want to work out what a 14% tip would be,
we could simply say “how much is 14% of $48”, and Siri would come back with an answer.
Bonus tip here, if you own an Apple Watch, this has by far the best tip-working-out
capability of any Apple device, built right into the calculator. Open the calculator app,
type in the value of the bill, and then tap the Tip button. You can then use the
digital crown to choose the tip percentage, and even the number of people splitting the bill,
giving you all the information you need right there on your wrist.
How long until?
You can use Siri to tell you how long it is until either a certain time in the day,
or even a certain day or event in your calendar. So if you’re working towards something,
maybe you’ve got a meeting coming up later that day, or a deadline coming up in a few weeks time,
you can use Siri to figure out exactly how long you’ve got left. So if I wanted to know
how long until 3pm today for example, I’d just say “How long until 3pm today”, and Siri would
let me know. Likewise, if I knew I had to turn a project in before the 20th May, I could say “how
long until the 20th May”, to figure out how much work time I’ve got remaining. Slightly annoyingly,
Siri will just give you the number of days and weeks until that time, even if you ask for
working days or weekdays specifically, it would be great to see that improved in the future.
Am I free? Also on the topic of time,
you no doubt already know that Siri can book out appointments for you,
and if you ask it what you’ve got coming up it will tell you about your next appointment,
but if you use your calendar to book everything in, you can use Siri to let you know immediately
if you’re free or busy on a certain day, and or a certain time. If you were to say “Am I free on
Friday” for example, Siri would let you know about any events that you’ve got coming up on that day.
You could be more specific, and say “Am I free at 3pm on Tuesday 2nd May?”, and your virtual
assistant will either tell you what you’ve got in your calendar, or let you know that you’re free.
End So there you go,
12 genuinely useful Siri commands. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the video,
Siri is starting to look kind of long in the tooth now, I’m really hoping that Apple are going to
announce some kind of major improvement for Siri at this year’s WWDC. What do you think, do you
have high hopes for Siri? Or do you use something else instead? Drop me a comment and let me know.
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.