Be honest, the last time you used Siri was by accident, wasn't it? A mad fumble to end a call to your boss at 2am on a Friday night because "Can I have garlic mayo?" apparently sounds like "Call Gary".
Apple's vocal marvel has so much more to offer, but if only we knew how to push its buttons. Which is where Hey-Siri.io comes in.
From email activities to reminders, this interactive website gives you the low-down on all the voice commands your Apple gadget will understand and which you probably never knew about. We've picked out the most useful below.
Get chatting.
How many days until "Halloween"?
Got a holiday coming up and want to count how many sleeps you've got left? Ask Siri "How many days until..." and mention the holiday in question, and Siri will do the rest for you. It's fine, you've got ages to work on that costume...
"Launch Spotify"
Siri can open any app you want, recognising either "Launch" or "Open" as the command to fire up the application.
No more digging through your folders trying to remember where you hid that latest game you downloaded.
"Enable Bluetooth"
Want to turn on your phone's Wi-Fi? Or change the brightness? Siri will recognise the following terms, to help you tweak any functions on your phone:
- "Enable" e.g. Bluetooth
- "Disable e.g. Wi-Fi
- "Increase/Decrease" e.g. Brightness
- "Maximum/Minimum" e.g. Volume
"Call the nearest McDonald's"
Say "Call" and pretty much anything you could associate a phone number with (your mum, your sister, your uncle Bob) and Siri will dial up the number for you.
It's also smart enough to know the proximity of local services, from cinemas to restaurants.
"Any new emails from my boss?"
Out of office but can't be bothered to dig through your inbox for a specific sender? Just ask Siri if you've had any emails from a particular contact and it'll do the legwork for you.
"How far away is..."
Trying to work out if you should walk/Uber/cycle to your evening's activities? Ask Siri how far away a particular location is and it'll give you a breakdown of the distance. You can then ask it to navigate for you as well.
"Show me photos from August"
Siri knows everything about your photo album. Even those photos of your ex you thought you'd deleted. Ask it to find images from a specific date, time and location and it'll do the searching for you. It even knows what a selfie is.
Basically, ask for anything you can think of asking
Got a random pub quiz-type question? "What is Elton John's original name?" How tall is Tom Cruise?" Just ask Siri, and it'll skim the likes of Wikipedia and the wider web for all the useful information you could possibly want. Clever stuff.
