https://www.howtogeek.com/229308/26-actually-useful-things-you-can-do-with-siri/
26 Actually Useful Things You Can Do with Siri
Siri is best known as Appleâs so-called digital personal assistant available
on iOS devices like iPhone and iPad. Some might think Siri is only good for
looking stuff up, but it can actually do a great deal more.
The thing about Siri is that can be hard to get used to, but once you do, it is
incredibly useful. You can do a fairly wide array of tasks on your iOS device
beyond simply looking something up. For example, you can have Siri create
reminders, take notes, and set alarms. It can even make changes to system
settings. Siri will also adapt to your personal language use and as you use it
more and more, will tailor results individually to you.
Siri can easily be activated by holding down the home button on your iOS device
until it beeps and the Siri interface appears. On iOS 9, Siri can also now be
activated by saying âHey Siriâ, which is invaluable when youâre eating or
driving or your iPhone is simply out of reach.
In this article, we want to go through and highlight some of the things that
Siri can do. You might be surprised at how versatile and useful it is.
Searching for Things
Weâll just get it out of the way because we donât want to be anti-climatic.
Obviously, you can use Siri to search, and in fact thatâs one of the things
it does very well. That said, Siri will also use a variety of web services to
pull data from other sources, so results are more useful than a simple list of
websites you can visit.
As youâll see in the following examples, if you want to find movie times, or
know sport scores, then what youâll see direct results rather than being
shown websites you could visit to get more information.
Create Reminders
We all need to remember things, and Siri really shines when setting reminders.
Simply say âremind me to â¦â and Siri will instantly add it to the
Reminders app on your device.
If you have other iOS devices or a Mac, your reminders will be replicated to
those as well, so no matter what Apple device youâre using, you can always
access your reminders. Further, you can have Siri give you more specific timely
reminders, for example, âHey Siri, remind me to go to the gym at 3 PM.â
Additionally you can ask Siri to read you your to-do list, as well as
location-oriented reminders like reminding you to perform an action when you
leave the house, when you return home, or arrive at a certain place. If you
have specific lists, you can tell Siri to add items to it like âadd apples to
my grocery listâ or âadd change oil to my to-do list.â
Create Events
Need to add something to your calendar? Siri can do that for you. Just tell
Siri to create an event titled âsuch and suchâ at this time on this day and
sheâll enter all that into your calendar for you.
Once Siri has the details nailed down, sheâll ask you to confirm or cancel.
Once confirmed, the event will be replicated across all your devices so you
donât to repeat the effort on your Mac or iPad.
Want to do more? You can, such as moving meetings, rescheduling appointments,
adding people to your meetings, and you can also ask about events, like what
the rest of your day looks like, when youâre meeting with someone, and when
your next appointment occurs.
Set Alarms
Setting alarms is really useful, particularly when you can use it in
conjunction with âHey Siriâ.
Simply say something like âset an alarm for 8 AMâ or âHey Siri, wake me
up at 6:30 AMâ and it will turn the alarm on for that appointed time. You can
also change alarms such as âchange my 6:30 AM alarm to 7:00 AM,â turn off
all your alarms, or have Siri set an alarm to wake you after a certain
duration, i.e. âwake me up in 45 minutes.â
Call People
This one is very useful when trying to operate your device hands-free. You can
use Siri to call people by simply telling it who to call.
You can even have it call a person on speaker so you donât have to look at
the phone to turn it on. That way, if you are driving, your eyes never leave
the road.
You can also call specific numbers, get your call history, see if you have any
missed calls, redial the last number, check your voicemail, and much more.
FaceTime with Your Friends
No need to open FaceTime if you want to chat face-to-face with friends and
family, simply ask Siri to do it for you.
You can specify whether you want to make a regular FaceTime call (with video)
or a FaceTime call with only audio.
Turn on a Timer
Simple but effective, and also pretty cool when youâre trying to operate
hands-free. Use Siri to create a timer so that if youâre cooking something
and washing your hands, you donât need to touch the phone.
Setting timers in this way is actually a lot easier than using the Clock app in
our opinion. You can also have Siri stop, pause, resume, and so forth.
Find out What Time it is
You can ask Siri what time it is, either where you live, or somewhere more
distant.
Sadly, you can only ask for the time one place at a time. If you try to ask
what time it is in several places at once, it will only return a result for the
first place you ask about.
Tell You What Song is Playing
While itâs true there are specific apps out there that can do this, simply
being able to tell Siri to listen and identify a song is a pretty neat trick.
Results are provided by SHAZAM but Siri will make it a seamless experience.
Play Songs from Your Favorite Artist
You can ask Siri to play songs from your favorite musical artist, or to play
songs similar to your favorite artist, or a specific song from your favorite
artist, and so on.
If you donât have any music from them on your iPhone or iPad, then Siri will
offer to queue them up on an Apple Music station.
Thereâs quite a few other things you can have Siri do for you when it comes
to music. You can ask it to play music by genre, play specific albums, and
basic controls like play, pause, and skip, among many other things.
Make Reservations
If you want to make a reservation at your favorite restaurant, Siri can connect
to OpenTable and do that for you.
Once Siri finds out if thereâs any available reservations, youâll be able
to tap the time you want and reserve a table. Make sure that if your party
includes more than two people that you specify how large it is.
Launch Applications
Hey, we get it, apps are awesome and you probably have a bazillion on your
iPhone by now, but donât you get tired of flipping through your screens to
find that one you only use occasionally?
No problem, just tell Siri to âopen Dropboxâ or âlaunch YouTubeâ and
youâll never have to scroll through your home screens again (unless you
really want to).
You can also have Siri go and fetch apps from the app store, such as
âdownload Twitterâ or even have it search the app store for new apps, such
as if youâre looking for a cooking or some other app.
Find and Read Emails
Donât want to hunt for a particular email? Simply have Siri find it. You can
have it search for email by subject, sender, date, and so forth.
Thereafter, once Siri finds the emails, you can have it read them to you, or
you can just tap the one you want to open it in the Mail application.
Beyond this, you can ask Siri to perform other email-related tasks, such as
asking it to check your email, replying to an email, and of course, sending new
emails.
Perform Calculations
Why use a calculator when you can just ask Siri?
Of course, you donât have to perform as complicated calculations as pictured
above, but itâs nice to know you could if needed.
Perform Quick Conversions
Want to quickly know how many cups are in a gallon or miles per hour to
kilometers per hour? Siri can perform quick conversions for you so you donât
have to look it up.
Next time youâre struggling mightily to convert tablespoons to teaspoons,
remember Siri can help you out with that.
Check Dates
Siri can do a lot of cool stuff with dates as well, such as telling you what
day of the week something is, how many days have elapsed between two dates,
what day next Friday will be, and more.
You can play around with this and get a lot of useful information, but if you
donât want a shock, it might be better not to ask Siri how many days ago you
were born!
Change Settings
This one is very useful because changing settings can sometimes be a little
tedious. With Siri, you can just ask it to turn off something like Wi-Fi, or
turn on Bluetooth.
Itâs a great little extra perk, and weâre glad that Apple finally added
this to iOS.
Access App Settings
If you have an app open on your iPhone or iPad, you can quickly access that
appâs settings by opening Siri and saying âSettingsâ.
We like this particular trick because itâs so much faster than accessing an
appâs settings the traditional way. Also, you donât have to have the actual
app open, you can ask Siri to open that appâs settings by saying âopen
[app] settingsâ.
Mapping
Mapping things is one of the most useful things a smartphone can do and luckily
Siri makes it even more useful. You can ask Siri to show you how to get from
point A to point B, or simply how far away a destination is.
You can do much more of course; you can ask Siri to give you directions home,
ask what your ETA is, find the nearest gas station, show you landmarks, and
tons of other stuff.
Because Apple Maps has gotten progressively better since itâs haphazard
launch several years ago, you may not even need Google, meaning that you can
have Siri route you around the country to your heartâs content.
Take Notes
Got a winning idea for the next great American novel, or something occurred to
you that you really want to remember? Donât leave it to your memory, have
Siri note it for you.
Itâs simple just to ask Siri to take a note, and like reminders and events,
it will be synced to iCloud so it will be available across all your devices.
Send Text Messages
Siri really shows her personal assistant chops when it comes to text messages.
Ask Siri to âsend a text messageâ to so-and-so, and it will ask you what
you want it to say.
Once, Siri has your message ready, you can tell it to send it to the recipient
or just cancel.
If you simply want to dictate a message to send, you can just tell Siri to text
someone with the message content. For example, âtext Mom and tell her Iâll
be home for Christmasâ or âreply to Kirk thatâs fantastic news.â
Read Text Messages
Texting and driving is a huge no-no, which is why you should just have Siri
help you out with that. For example, in addition to being able to dictate and
send text messages, you can also have it read them to you.
Of course, if someone sends you something personal, itâs probably best not to
have Siri read it aloud in front of others, but if youâre in the car driving,
and someone sends you a message, you wonât have to pull over to read it,
instead you can have it read to you.
Once Siri has read you your new text message, you can have it reply or simply
call the sender.
Follow Sports
For those of you who love and follow sports, you can have Siri keep you abreast
of what is going on with your favorite (or not so favorite) teams.
You can ask when a team is playing, who they play, or what the score was. Siri
can also give you other information such as standings and information about
specific teams, as well as what games are on, what channel your favorite team
is on, and much, much more.
See Where and When Movies are Playing
Want to go see the latest Hollywood blockbuster but donât want to play movie
roulette? Ask Siri to show you where something is playing nearby.
Being able to just ask Siri where a movie is playing will prove to be a
terrific timesaver. Furthermore, the fun doesnât end there, you can also ask
Siri about who starred in a movie, find out which types of movies are playing,
whatâs playing at a specific theater, and so on.
Give Yourself a Nickname
If you donât want Siri to refer to you by your name, you can tell it to call
you by another.
Of course, if you donât like the new nickname, or you want a different one,
you can change it at anytime by simply asking Siri to call you something else.
Just Ask About What You Can Ask About
If you want to know more, and dig further into all of Siriâs powers, simply
activate it say, âwhat can I ask you?â
Siri will give you a long list of categories, and when you tap on each one, it
will give you further examples of all the things you can do with it.
Say Goodbye
Finally, when youâre finished using Siri, you can make it go away by saying
something dismissive like âbyeâ or âsee you later.â
Being able to do so much with Siri means that itâs far more likely to become
a more routinely used feature instead of an occasional tool for looking stuff
up. The ability to set reminders or read text messages gives you powers that
you might never thought available to you.
Beyond this, if you want to change Siriâs gender or accent, or have it
respond to your voice, then you can do that too.
We hope you found this article useful, particularly if you use an iOS device
but have never really taken advantage of what Siri offers. If you have anything
you would like to add, such as a Siri skill we missed, a comment, or a
question, please leave your feedback in our discussion forum.
Sent from my iPhone
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