As personal assistants go, Apple’s Siri is one of the most popular, but most people have no idea of some of the more interesting things that she can do.
One of the best and most underused is Opening Apps. Most people press the ‘home’ button and then swipe across their iPhone screen until they find the app they need, tapping its icon when they do. Instead, you can simply ask Siri to “play candy crush” or “launch calculator” and she will.
You can also use Siri to change your iPhone’s settings if you have an iPhone that is iOS 7 or higher. For example, you can ask Siri to “turn on Bluetooth”, “dim the screen” or even “turn on airplane mode”. Keep in mind however that, because Siri needs an Internet connection, asking her to “turn off airplane mode” won’t work.
If you’re not in the mood to read your emails, Siri will read them for you. We’re not just talking about the header information either, but the entire email. Not only will your entire email be read out loud to you but, when it stops, Siri will ask you if you would like to dictate a response to it.
Composing a new email is easy with Siri as well. When you tell it a phrase like “email Dad about the baseball game Saturday night” all of the words after you say “about” will be included in the subject line of your new email message.
If wasting time rummaging through your music app doesn’t sound appealing, just ask Siri to search for a song for you and play it. Simply tell Siri the name of the album, song or band you want to hear and she’ll find it for you and start playing it. If you set up iTunes radio and have stations set up as well, you can also ask to play a specific iTunes station.
If you’ve installed Apple’s Find My friends on your iPhone, you can also ask Siri to find your friends by asking as specifically as possible the name of the person you want to find. “Where is my mom?”, “who is nearby?”, And “is my girlfriend Debbie at work?” will result in Siri showing you a map with that person’s location. Of course your friends must make their locations available, you must be logged in and you must have Find My Friends set up on your phone in order to do this.
If you’re a movie buff, Siri can also search for movie facts for you. By asking questions like “Who played Han Solo in Star Wars?”, “When was Titanic released?”, or “Which movie won Best Picture in 1978?”, Siri will tell you everything you want to know. You can also ask about show times, what movies are opening and even about reviews.
Finally, for fans of either Facebook or Twitter, Siri can help you to post directly to social media websites. If you say, for example, “Tweet with my location I just saw an accident on market Street and Main” or “Tweet I just saw Liam Neeson in a restaurant looking handsome as ever!”, Siri will post to your Twitter account. The same thing, more or less, can be done with Facebook.
So, iPhone fans, now you know a number of awesome new things you can do with your iPhone and Siri. That’s not bad for a personal assistant who never complains, takes a day off or asks for a raise.