Besides using Siri to learn things like the current score of a sports event or details about the cast of a movie, you can also use it to perform tasks on your device. Siri can adjust various settings, enable or disable features, open apps, play music, add calendar events and reminders, create notes, and countless other activities.
There’s no exhaustive list of the commands you can issue; your best bet is simply to try whatever you’re curious about. Here is just a handful of examples to get you started:
- Change settings:
- Increase the screen brightness
- Lower the volume by 20 percent
- Turn on Reduce Transparency
- Enable VoiceOver
Some of these commands may require confirmation with a switch or button on screen.
-
Work with apps:
- Open Safari
- Play something by Angine de Poitrine
- Pause music
- Add peanut butter to the Shopping list
- Remind me to water the garden
- Start a FaceTime audio call with Johnson
-
Find information:
- Show me documents I created last week
- Find PDFs with the label Important
- Look up Stacey Butler’s address
Thanks to an Apple framework called App Intents, third-party developers can provide hooks in their own apps that let Siri gather information and perform actions. Over time, as more apps add these capabilities, you should be able to ask Siri to do an ever-increasing number of tasks for you.
