If you have an iPhone, it is quite likely that you are already familiar with Siri , the voice assistant that we find in different Apple devices, equivalent to Google’s Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa or Microsoft’s Cortana.
In fact, we found Siri available on almost all Apple devices, including not just iPhone or iPad; also on Mac (iMac, Mac mini and Macbook), Apple Watch, Apple TV and the new HomePods.
We can use it to ask you all kinds of questions, from simple questions about the weather that you are going to ask in the next few hours or days, to much more complex questions, such as the number of calories in a certain food, the latest sports results or, how no, the latest news.
But one of its main functions is to enable or disable settings , write text messages or make phone calls , or even set reminders and alarms, all completely wirelessly (that is, without having to handle the device with your hands) .
But in order to use it, it is essential to configure it first , especially if we did not do it during the initial configuration of the phone, when we turned it on and configured it for the first time after buying it.
How to enable and configure Siri for the first time
If we do not configure Siri when starting the device for the first time, we can always do it at any other time. To do this, we start the Settings app that we will find, as always, on the home screen of the iPhone or iPad.
We scroll down until we find the Siri and Searches option. We touch the switch next to Listen to “Hey Siri” , which will enable Apple’s voice assistant.
Next, we touch the switch next to Press Home for Siri , which will allow Siri to activate automatically when pressing the device’s home button. Likewise, it is also recommended to enable the Allow Siri option when the iPhone is locked .
Using Siri in CarPlay
Once configured, there is no doubt that Siri can become an extremely interesting feature when used with CarPlay , since we can give a series of voice commands without even having to touch the car screen.
And what things could we do with Siri while we have our iPhone connected to CarPlay? Very easy. After starting with ‘Hey Siri’, we can tell you some of the following commands:
- “Call [name of person on our phone contact list].”
- “Send a text message to [contact name] that I am coming home.”
- “Navigate home” (which will activate the Maps function).
- “Put [name of our favorite music artist].”
As we can see, the possibilities are practically endless, so that we will always find useful functionality to use with Siri while driving. Of course, in case a certain voice command does not work as expected, it is advisable to do other tests until we find the option we are looking for.
