Everything new with Siri in iOS 12

AppleInsider

Siri has received a wealth of new skills in iOS 12 from new voices to new areas of knowledge. AppleInsider digs in to find everything new with Siri inside of iOS 12.

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New abilities

One of the biggest changes has to be Siri Shortcuts. Siri Shortcuts is wide-ranging, with the term just touching on the facets of this new ability that allows users to create their own phrases and tasks for Siri to execute.

Common tasks can be added to Siri from within Settings > Siri & Search. These tasks can include everything from opening a specific website a user visits often, to finding a family member in Find My Friends.

Individual apps are also able to include this functionality. Tile was the example used on stage at Apple's 2018 WWDC, where within the Tile app a Siri command could be created that would make the Bluetooth tracker on your keys ring.

A new Shortcuts app is being released where tinkerers can get much more granular in their approach to creating Siri commands and shoot from a gallery of popular options.

There are four main areas of new knowledge to Siri this year, including food, famous people, motorsports, and photos

Other new features are filling in gaps that seemingly should have been around in the past such as being able to enable/disable the flashlight.

All changes:

,

• "Hey Siri" works with Low Power Mode
  
  Normally disabled under Low Power mode, it is possible to perform the "Hey Siri" wake command when the battery is low.



• Play music intent for third party music apps
  
  While not as seamless as requests for Apple Music, it will be possible for services like Spotify and others to use Siri to play media from their apps.



• Siri Irish male accent



• Siri Irish female accent



• Siri South African male accent



• Siri South African female accent



• Ask Siri to show your passwords
  
  Asking for the password for a specific application or service will open up the Settings application and show the relevant section containing passwords.



• Find My iPhone intents for Siri
  
  Asking an iPhone's Siri where the user's iPad is located will try to find it, with options to make it play a sound, similar to Find My iPhone's options.



• Add Shortcuts to Siri
  
  Similar to Amazon's Alexa routines, but arguably more powerful, the Shortcuts app will let iOS users create Siri phrases that perform multiple actions simultaneously. Saying "Hey Siri, I'm headed home" could be used to start a radio station, get directions, trigger a thermostat, and send a message to your partner.



• Siri flashlight controls
  
  You can ask Siri to turn the flashlight on and off.



• Workflow app works with Siri Shortcuts



• Enhanced Spotlight Siri suggestions
  
  Siri will analyse a user's usage and habits on a deeper level, and provide more appropriate results.



• Shortcuts app
  
  Used to manage the shortcuts above.



• Answer questions about famous people



• Answer questions about food



• Answer questions about motorsports



• Can search memories in Photos
  
  Will automatically open up the Photos app to find requested memories, such as images containing specific people.

Be sure to check out everything else new in iOS 12:


Everything new with Notifications in iOS 12
Everything new with Messages in iOS 12
How to share photos in Messages in iOS 12
Use Siri Suggestions with Do Not Disturb mode in iOS 12
Create your own Siri Shortcuts in iOS 12
How to use Continuity Camera with macOS Mojave and iOS 12
All the new HomeKit features in iOS 12
All the iPad-specific features in iOS 12
How to use iOS 12's new AR Measure app
How to use Screen Time in iOS 12
Create your own MeMoji in iOS 12


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tallest skil

AppleInsider said:
Siri Irish female accent

Oh dear, I might have to switch to that. *cough*

Folio

Looking forward to see how Siri improves. One nit I hope iOS 12 fixes is more accurate measurements of battery usage. Lately on my iPhone X, daily and weekly usage suggests my Flashlight app (mistakingly) is one of top two energy hogs, often up past 30%. A web search showed other users w this problem. Minor issue, since overall battery lasts fine.

kruegdude

Hmm, I thought the Shortcuts app was a replacement for the Workflow app. I guess I thought this because I read that when the Shortcuts app is opened your defined Workflows will be automatically ported over.

zeus423

About 3 weeks ago Siri lost a function I used fairly often on my iPod -- the ability to tell me the battery charge percentage. Now Siri tells me how to turn that feature on, but the feature is not available on an iPod. I miss the, "Hey, Siri, what's my battery level" feature.

backstab

tallest skil said:

AppleInsider said:
Siri Irish female accent

Oh dear, I might have to switch to that. *cough*

LOL Beat me to it.
Hellooooo Siri.
Can Siri also be a redhead?

anantksundaram

These are all silly little tweaks. Siri still remains a toy. 

I do know know a single iPhone user — and I know a fair number — who does not think Siri is a joke, or does not  let out a derisive snort when you mention “Siri”. 

Sad. 

nunzy

I love Siri.  Now it's better than ever.

CheeseFreeze

Extra features are useless if Siri remains so bad at understanding context, adaptation and narrative. 

Siri is nothing more than a voice trigger for simple commands. It can’t be labeled as a true “voice assistant”.

Anilu_777

Siri needs to be able to follow context and stay ‘alert’ for follow-up questions or commands. I mostly use Siri when driving as I’m hands-free. She needs to be able to direct me and answer questions/do tasks without me unlocking the phone and without me needing to say “hey Siri” again. 

dougd

I have Siri turned off and will keep it off. No time for this silly nonsense 

entropys

Is Siri Shortcuts a necessary work around because Siri is too stupid to understand a simple instruction without having it wired in? Discuss

Alphadork1

I wonder if Siri will finally be able to set a wakeup alarm more than 24 hours in the future. :-/

Yanxfan

Siri is still the novelty toy it always was. It’s accuracy level is terrible at best. Why improve on the tasks available when the app is so hit and miss to begin with? I use it occasionally to send messages while I’m driving but that in itself is distracted driving just trying to get Siri to understand the message I’m trying to send. I love Apple and I love my iPhone but Siri and I aren’t even friends.

urahara

When driving I ask: Hey Siri play some music
what I get is a button to open my music app. Seriously. Siri can’t even play music from the native Music app. 
Siri is just very limited, and basically useless except setting the reminders. 

cgWerks

I wonder if I can use Siri Shortcuts to get Siri to answer a phone call while driving or start one of my playlists, so I don't have to pull over?

But, the most useful thing, I suppose, will be to get it to bring up Photos Memories, so I can see my award winning photo of a hair-product bottle.

backstab

urahara said:

When driving I ask: Hey Siri play some music
what I get is a button to open my music app. Seriously. Siri can’t even play music from the native Music app. 
Siri is just very limited, and basically useless except setting the reminders. 

  Yeah I get the button too.
....While Siri begins playing my music (?...)

techno

urahara said:

When driving I ask: Hey Siri play some music
what I get is a button to open my music app. Seriously. Siri can’t even play music from the native Music app. 
Siri is just very limited, and basically useless except setting the reminders. 

Works just fine for me when I ask Siri to play some music. And I am always delightfully surprised when it starts me off with a song I actually do like.

chasm

I use Siri constantly on my Watch and on my iOS devices, and I love it. "Hey siri, send a message to my wife (followed by message)," "What movies are playing nearby" "can you recommend a good sushi place near here," "Call (contact)" or "What's the phone number for (name of business)", "play some 80s punk," "remind me to get some pop when I leave here" -- the list goes on and on. The one area where I wish Siri could match Google assistant is in the question "what time does (business) on (street) close tonight?"

ihatescreennames

mike54 said:

This new list useless, its easy bits to do. So much more work needs to be done, everyday constantly for years. Maps and voice recognition need loads of money, loads of full time staff, time  and research spent on it, constantly.

I use Siri many times daily and Maps frequently (I use it more often now as my 2 and half year old likes to hear and repeat street names. So even when I know how to get somewhere I'll sometimes use navigation, just for that.) and I have almost zero issues.  However, I have noticed that when Siri gives me a bad result when I'm asking for directions I usually get that same bad result when I type the same request into Maps.  It seems this isn't really a Siri problem but a Maps problem.  Siri can't help it if Maps is handing it bad information.

urahara said:

When driving I ask: Hey Siri play some music
what I get is a button to open my music app. Seriously. Siri can’t even play music from the native Music app. 
Siri is just very limited, and basically useless except setting the reminders. 

As mentioned, I use Siri many times daily and several of those are to play music.  Siri can absolutely play music from the native Music app.  The Siri interface will start playing music but also present a button that says "Open Music".

ihatescreennames

cgWerks said:

I wonder if I can use Siri Shortcuts to get Siri to answer a phone call while driving or start one of my playlists, so I don't have to pull over?

But, the most useful thing, I suppose, will be to get it to bring up Photos Memories, so I can see my award winning photo of a hair-product bottle.

I've never tried having Siri answer a call, while driving or not.  In the car I just push a button on the steering wheel to answer incoming calls.  I also use Siri to play specific playlists all the time.

It is odd how the occasional completely unrelated photo shows up in Memories.  I remember one that was a nice montage of vacation photos and right in the middle of it was a photo I had downloaded of a Jeep Grand Cherokee (I think) on fire with a caption mentioning Galaxy batteries.  I'm not sure the marketing about Memories pulling just the moments that are special to you is particularly accurate.