Transcription
Voice assistants can be a wonderful thing when they work. And although Siri is far from perfect, she can usually do things like answer basic questions, send messages, set timers and alarms, and even calculations and translations. But there are some things that are even cooler and more useful that she can do that I bet you don't even know about, including a bonus tip for Harry Potter fans.
The first really useful thing to know is that she can adjust basic device settings for you. So whatever device you're on, you can say something like, "Turn off Bluetooth." And you can do the same thing for things like Wi-Fi, airplane mode, or even your different focus modes. Another one I like to use is, "Phone brightness 50%." And an even handier one is, "Restart my device."
You probably already know that you can use her to make phone calls, but what's great is you can also have her make those phone calls on speakerphone if you need to be hands-free. So you could just say, "Call Mom on speakerphone." And this is one to remember because if ever you're in an emergency and you can't reach your phone, you can use her to call 911 on speakerphone.
What's great is the same thing will work when you're answering a call and need to be hands-free. So you could just say, "Answer on speaker."
Something that can be really frustrating is when she doesn't understand who you're trying to call. But there's a few ways you can fix this. The first thing is you can tell her contact relations. So, for example, I could say, "Harry Potter is my brother," and then save that. So now if ever I wanted to say, "Call my brother," she'll know which contact to call.
The other thing you can do, though, if you usually refer to someone by their nickname and that confuses her, you can go to their contact card, hit edit, scroll down to the bottom, and you'll see "Add Field," and then "Nickname." So, if you click on that, you can actually type in what the person's nickname is. And then when you're asking to message or call this person, you could use either their full name or their nickname.
If the issue, though, is that she keeps mispronouncing the person's name, which can be frustrating and very funny at the same time, what you would do is go back into the contact card and this time when you hit "Add Field," choose "Phonetic First Name" or "Last Name," whichever she's mispronouncing. And then you can actually spell out phonetically how to say the person's name so she knows how to pronounce it.
Also, just to clarify, this is not the Harry Potter bonus tip. That's still coming up.
She can also help you find any of your devices, including your AirTags. So, this can be really helpful when you know your phone is in the same room as you, you just can't find it. So, you can just say, "Find my iPhone." [Music] And thankfully, this will work even if your phone is in silent mode.
Now, you probably know it's really easy to ask her to set an alarm for you, but if you're like most people, you probably have an incredibly long list of old alarms. And instead of having to tediously go through and delete each one, you can just ask her to do it for you. So, you would just say, "Delete all my alarms." And then you're starting with a clean slate. And thankfully, she's smart enough not to delete any of your sleep routines or sleep schedule alarms.
Using Siri to remind you of things is one of the most useful features and probably the feature I use the most. But what's even more useful is asking Siri to remind you to do something when you get to or leave a location. So, if you want to remember to go to the grocery store to buy milk when you leave home next, you could just say, "Remind me to go buy milk when I leave home." And this can easily work for other locations as well, as long as the address is saved in contacts. So whether it's your own work address or a friend's house, "Remind me to wish Harry a happy birthday when I get to Harry Potter's house."
Another great thing you can do with reminders is create deep links in most of Apple's native apps. So let's say I'm in Apple News and I find a really interesting article, but I don't have time to read it now. I could just say, "Remind me about this." And she'll really quickly create a reminder with a link to the article. However, you can't give it a time, which is really unfortunate. I wish I could say, "Remind me about this at 5:00 p.m., for example." Instead, I would have to click into the reminder that she's created and then manually assign a time.
Another really useful thing you can do from most Apple native apps is ask her to share something. So let's say I'm in Photos and I want to quickly share this picture of my breakfast. I could say, "Share this with Harry Potter." I could add any comments if I just keep talking, and then I could quickly send it off.
In Safari, you can have her read an article for you by just saying, "Read this." [Music] And you can even have the options to skip ahead or go back.
You can also use her to find out which song is playing. And because Apple bought Shazam a few years ago, Shazam is actually now integrated with Siri. So, you don't even have to have the Shazam app downloaded. You can just say, "What song is playing?"
If you have a device that supports Apple Intelligence, the great news is she does get a lot smarter with the help of ChatGPT. So, if I wanted to ask something a little bit more complicated that I know she wouldn't be able to answer, I still can. "What should I pack for a trip to Portugal in October?" I use this ChatGPT integration all the time. It has seriously made my experience so much better. But if you're curious what other Apple Intelligence features there are, I have made a video on this, so I'll link it down below in case you want to watch that next.
Did you know there are two Harry Potter spells built into your iPhone? On any Apple device that has a flashlight, you can say, "Lumos," and it'll turn on your flashlight. And then again, you can say, "Nox," to turn off your flashlight.
Let me know if you already knew all of these tips or if there's any I've missed that you can teach me. And if you did get value out of today's video, please go ahead and give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel so you don't miss any future tips and tricks. And that's it. So have a great day. Bye. [Music]