How to use Siri: tips and tricks to improve Apple’s voice assistant on iPhone and more

Siri has a new voice; time to make use of it

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When choosing the best voice assistant in 2021, most people limit the comparison toAlexa vs Google Assistant, with Siri as an afterthought. Yet Siri has received significant upgrades with recent software updates likeiOS 14, making it more useful foriPhoneowners than in the past.

Perhaps you want to set reminders or check information without actually opening up youriPhone apps, or control yoursmart home deviceswith yourApple HomePod mini. Regardless, you’ll need to know how to use Siri effectively.

We’ll walk you through some useful Siri settings and customizations, including how to change Siri’s voice, how to improve Siri music recommendations, and how to summon Siri. You’ll also learn some useful Siri commands and some tips and tricks for how to useApple’s voice assistant more effectively.

Siri settings: how to call Siri and how to change Siri’s voice

First things first, you need to know how to call Siri. As with any smart speaker, Apple HomePod is always listening for Siri’s wake word. Most people, however, will want to call Siri from their iPhones, which have different means of summoning the smart assistant.

Go toSettings > Siri & Searchto find your Siri customization options. Let’s break down some of those controls below:

Depending on which Settings you have active, you can call Siri byholding down the power buttonorsaying ‘Hey Siri’when your phone is face up and uncovered. If you want your iPhone to listen for the wake words even when it’s face-down or covered, go toSettings > Accessibility > Siriand turn onAlways Listen for ‘Hey Siri’.

You can toggle onType to Siriin that same menu if you want to ask the VA a question without speaking it out loud.

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As forchangingSiri’s voice, you can choose between American, Australian, British, Indian, Irish or South African accents in the English language, with a male and female option for most accents and four American voices in total.

How to make Siri smarter and more personalized

Siri can be pretty helpful as a shortcut for your apps, but like any voice assistant, it may not give you the information you need or follow your instructions the way you hope – at least initially. There are ways to make Siri more efficient and personalized, thankfully.

For starters, if you find that Siri is having trouble recognizing your words, go toSettings > Siri & Searchand turnListen for ‘Hey Siri’and/orPress Side Button for Sirioff and on until you get theSet Up “Hey Siri"pop-up. This will allow you to retrain your phone to recognize your voice more accurately.

If you turned onAlways Show Speech(which we recommend), you’ll see when Siri misinterprets what you said. If Siri gets something wrong, tap the text of your question and replace the incorrect text with the proper word. Siri will hopefully learn its lesson and get a better grasp of your speech in the future.

After that, the best, simplest way to make Siri smarter is to use it frequently until Apple learns what you want from it.

For instance,iOS 14.5improved Siri to help it remember your music preferences. Siri typically defaults to Apple Music when you ask it to play a song, but we have a guide onteaching Sirito play Spotify or other third-party music services instead.

As for other uses, Siri will understand obvious or common commands like ‘Set a timer for 10 minutes’, especially if the command employs a first-party Apple app. But for more complex commands, you’ll want to set up a shortcut in the Shortcuts app.

How to create Siri shortcuts, and how to find and enable untrusted Shortcuts

Open theShortcuts app, hit the+icon in the top right, and selectAdd Action. Search for the app you want to use, and you’ll find a series of suggested actions – like Show Directions in Apple Maps.

Choose an action and add any customizations, such as specifying cycling directions or setting the destination to your home address. HitNext, thennamethe Shortcut. Make it something simple and memorable, then hitDone.

With that, you now have a Siri shortcut. Say the name of the shortcut (e.g., ‘Hey Siri, Take me home’) and Siri will recognize the title and run the shortcut for you.

This method can be time-consuming. If you want to find many personalized Shortcuts to add all at once, open theShortcutsapp and tap theGallerytab on the bottom.

You’ll see generic Shortcut collections (Starter Shortcuts,Great with Siri, etc.), plus personalized Shortcuts and Automations based on the information Apple has collected on your activities. For example, Apple knows when I typically call my parents, what apps I use while driving, who I message most on which apps, and so on.

You may find this amount of knowledge invasive, but you can use Apple’s profile to create shortcuts for your most common activities.

You can also rely on other people to create shortcuts for you. Go to sites likeShortcutsGallery.comor r/Shortcuts onRedditto find customized shortcuts and automations that you may find useful. Open theiriCloudlinks on your iPhone, and it will take you directly to the Shortcuts app to enable it.

Apple automatically blocks any shortcuts that come from third-party sources, so clicking any of those links will give you a ‘Can’t be opened’ pop-up. But if you go toSettings > Shortcutsand toggleAllow Untrusted Shortcuts, Apple will let you add them without an issue.

How to delete your Siri recordings

Apple saves your conversations with Siri under a ‘random, device-generated identifier’ that isn’t associated with your Apple ID, email or other personal information.

Specifically, Apple saves data like your music preferences, nicknames for contacts, Siri shortcuts, and other information to answer your future questions more efficiently – and generate customized shortcuts. Still, the company swears it doesn’t sell your search history to advertisers.

If you still don’t want Apple to have your anonymous data, it’s simple to remove it from Apple’s servers. Simply go toSettings > Siri & Search > Siri & Dictation History > Delete Siri & Dictation History.

Michael Hicks began his freelance writing career with TechRadar in 2016, covering emerging tech like VR and self-driving cars. Nowadays, he works as a staff editor for Android Central, but still writes occasional TR reviews, how-tos and explainers on phones, tablets, smart home devices, and other tech.

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