How-To

Once you invoke Siri using any of the many methods, you can start asking questions or asking Siri to perform tasks.

There’s a little nuance to how Siri answers. If you type your query in, for example, a Search or Ask field, then as you type—just as with previous versions—Spotlight finds local files and apps, images in Photos, tasks from Reminders, contact cards, App Store matches, and so forth. These start to display immediately.

If Siri identifies a search that appears Spotlight-focused, it presents a blue search button in the lower-right corner on an iPhone or iPad; on a Mac, there’s no indicator. More exact matches offer a suggestion as a completion after a long dash in gray text. If you type photoshop on a Mac with Adobe Photoshop installed, you see “photoshop — Adobe Photoshop 2025.a…” with everything after photoshop in gray.

However, if you type a question, more words, or something ambiguous, “— Ask Siri” appears in gray. On an iPhone or iPad, the search button turns into an arrow button—an Ask button, we assume. Tap the arrow button or, on a Mac, press Return, to trigger a Siri response to what you typed.

On all three kinds of devices, a Show Results button with overlapping icons—representing the kinds of items found—may appear below the Siri field. On the Mac, we saw it appear briefly before showing a scrolling results list as with Spotlight.

This automatic recognition of your query type means you don’t have to think about how you formulate a search or question: type what you want and let Siri figure it out. If the results list for a search doesn’t suffice, elaborate on what you’re asking.

You can broadly ask Siri these kinds of things:

• Find something or analyze something on my device or in my personal information that’s available on this device, like text in Notes, events in Calendar, text recognized in Photos, and so on. (See how Siri AI and Spotlight merged.)
• Provide me an answer about something that doesn’t necessarily include any of my personal data, or may not need to.
• Make me an image of something I describe.

That’s all very general. What are specific kinds of queries you might make? Remember that the data has to exist for Siri to answer. We rely on a third-party email client, so Siri seems to have limited access to our email stores for now. But nearly everything else we do is stored in and synced by iCloud.

Here are a handful of examples of the wide range of questions you can ask and commands you can make, as the list is effectively endless:

• What movie am I thinking of? It has Harry Lime in it. As you may have found with other chatbots, Siri can take a small amount of factual information and work like a memory aid by filling in the gaps, or asking clarifying questions. (Answer: The Third Man.)
• Summarize my conversation last week with *name*. We found this particularly useful because, in testing, Siri did seem to figure out the most important things talked about, provide a solid analysis of the topics, and link to individual messages.
• Start a timer for *time units. You can specify any time in any units. We tried 13 1/2* and it was interpreted correctly.
• How many times did I go out for lunch this year? Siri pulled information from one of our calendars but also from a shared calendar used by a spouse. It also didn’t necessarily identify things that weren’t labeled “lunch” but were midday meal dates.
• How do I clean a toilet that has a seemingly permanent stain inside the bowl? Siri can consult external sources and stuff that’s in its outboard LLM brain in the cloud to give you ideas for what to try.
• Create an album containing all the images that I took in June 2024. Siri adds an album to Photos, and provides a link you can click to view that album in Photos.
• Did I receive a birthday party invitation recently? Siri gave one of us a summary derived from a mix of emails and messages, correctly identifying two recent invitations for events that had already passed, while noting that it saw nothing upcoming.
• What are some times I have nothing scheduled between 10 and noon next week? Siri offers a list of days in which that condition is true, but also shows the conflicts that impinge on that range on some days.
• How do I feel about *person*? This is a question you might ask to test out the way Siri AI “thinks,” and we were surprised to find that it did a great job at accurately, if effusively, summarizing our interactions with a person by looking at email, messages, and other cues.
• Make a picture of a nice lasagna dinner in a photorealistic style. While we have all sorts of feelings about this, it’s definitely something you can do. (See the Apple Intelligence features to skip.)

One of us attended a 60th birthday party recently, where former officemates regaled attendees with the celebrant’s early use of voice-recognition software. He had trained it so he could say “paste”—or rather, “Paste. Paste. PASTE!!!”—to perform that command and so on. The wits in the office would walk by and yell “erase hard drive! OK! Approve! OK!”

Reminders takes advantage of Apple Intelligence to examine information in your reminders and make them, or their organizational structure, more useful to you.

Get suggested reminders

While working in other apps, you can prompt Apple Intelligence to extract items from Reminders. While looking at a recipe, for instance:

1. Tap or click the Share button, and the Suggestions section should appear in a moment with all the ingredients to add to a shopping list or all the steps in a recipe.
2. Tap or click the plus button to add items, or tap or click Include All.
3. Tap the blue checkmark button or click Add to finish.

You can refine this by making a selection before tapping or clicking the Share button. In our testing, Suggestions first showed the steps. Selecting the ingredients section first produced the comprehensive shopping list.

Categorize your reminders

If you would prefer your device to divide up your reminders within a list by category, you can use Auto-Categorize. Select a list, then tap the More button and choose Auto-Categorize, or right-click/Control-click the list and choose Auto-Categorize. The results may vary. When we tested it, we had a hard time figuring out what it did.

To turn Auto-Categorize off on an iPhone or iPad, tap the Siri button, then choose Turn Off from the Auto-Categorize section; on a Mac, right-click or Control-click the list, choose Auto-Categorize to turn it off. Then click or tap either Keep or Remove to determine what happens to your existing sections.

Write naturally

As with Calendar, on devices with Apple Intelligence, you can type loosely—if not using completely natural language—and Reminders suggests or fills in task-related elements.

What Notes adds

Notes makes limited use of Apple Intelligence, offering it in two places in the app.

Summarize a transcript

You can record a call from FaceTime or Phone—starting in iOS 18.1, iPadOS 26, and Tahoe—which is automatically transcribed as text in an entry in Notes and saved in that entry as an audio file. The transcription doesn’t require Apple Intelligence, but a summary created after the recording ends does.

Record a call in either app after a call starts by tapping or clicking the More button, then choose Call Recording. In iOS 18.1, tap the Record button.

Add Siri AI answers

You can tell Siri to insert its answers to your questions into a note by the note’s name. You can also ask Siri to format the answer in a particular way so that when it’s inserted, it looks the way you want. For example, you can take a long response from Siri and ask it to format it as a bulleted list.

Make or improve images with Magic Wand

The Magic Wand tool in Notes lets you create images directly in a note, even from the text of the note. To try it, tap the drawing button to reveal drawing tools and then select the Magic Wand. Then simply draw a circle to trigger it.

Magic Wand automatically incorporates any text in the note in the image generation prompt. However, with Apple Intelligence, you can add additional elements by typing a description in the Describe an Image field and tapping the send button. Tap the minus button next to an element to remove it from the image.

Starting in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, you can also start by using the drawing tools to create a sketch, then switch to the Magic Wand, circle your drawing, and it incorporates that along with text in the note.

Tap Done to insert the image in your note. You may have to swipe down on the canvas to reveal the Done button.

The Siri pane is where you configure Siri AI, and where you can check whether Siri AI is engaged at all.

The settings you can configure are:

• Requests: This setting determines what name(s), if any, Siri listens for. Click or tap this and select “Siri” or “Hey Siri,” “Hey Siri,” or Off.
• Language: Select the language Siri uses for both listening and speaking. Initially, only English is supported for Siri AI, though Apple plans to add more languages over time. As a result, if you set language to anything other than English, your device reverts to the old Siri—with the old icon—rather than Siri AI, with the new icon.

  Your Siri language and your system language must also match exactly, which is covered in how to turn on the new Siri.

• Voice: It has long been possible to choose among various male- and female-sounding voices and even different dialects, and Siri AI adds even more choices. But now, you can also adjust Siri’s speed and expressiveness. If you want a zippy, flat, “just the facts” response; a relaxed, cheerful response; or anything in between, you can go to Settings > Siri on iPhone or iPad, or System Settings > Siri on a Mac, and click or tap Voice. On this pane, you can select a base voice and then drag the Pace and Expressivity sliders as sample responses are played to dial in exactly the tone you prefer.

This feature requires more advanced chips than are needed for Apple Intelligence. See the requirements for expressive voices.

• Responses: You have two choices as to how Siri responds to requests:
  • Spoken Response: Siri speaks responses when you speak to Siri, but provides textual responses when you type to Siri.
  • Silent Response: Siri almost always provides textual responses. But note that even with this setting, Siri speaks responses if you’re driving or wearing headphones—and possibly in other limited situations.
• Siri App: The following three settings apply to the Siri app:
  • Opens To: Select what appears when you open the app: either Recent Conversations or A New Conversation.
  • Keep Conversations: Select 30 Days, 1 Year, or Forever. Note that there’s no longer a Delete Siri & Dictation History button, though you can manually delete any or all of the history items in the Siri app.
  • Preview: Select None or 1–5 lines.

To control Siri conversation syncing across your devices, go to Settings > Your Name > iCloud on iPhone or iPad, or System Settings > Your Name > iCloud on a Mac, then tap See All, followed by Siri. You can disable Sync this Device (enabled by default). The Keep Conversations setting is synced with the main Siri retention setting: change it here, and it’s changed globally, not just for iCloud.

• ChatGPT: Click or tap ChatGPT to change options specific to this third-party AI engine:
  • Use Extension: On by default, this lets Siri tap into OpenAI’s ChatGPT when you explicitly ask it to (see how to use ChatGPT with Siri AI and Image Playground). Turn it off, and the option to use ChatGPT disappears from other places in your operating system.
  • ChatGPT Account: If you have a free or paid ChatGPT account, you can click Sign In and provide your credentials, in which case your account is used for all ChatGPT requests. Read how to use ChatGPT with Siri AI for the privacy implications.
  • Capabilities: Requests and Image Creation via ChatGPT have advanced capabilities, but only up to a point; if you exceed your daily limit, you go back to restricted access for 24 hours. The labels next to Requests and Image Creation let you know what’s available to you at this moment.
  • Upgrade to ChatGPT Plus: If you don’t already have a paid ChatGPT account, you can click this button to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus for $24.99 per month, which removes the daily limits described above, but with a privacy trade-off.
  • Voice: If you want Siri to use a different voice for responses that come from ChatGPT than your usual Siri voice, click Choose, select Custom, and choose the accent and voice you prefer.
• Automatic Visual Look Up: This switch is labeled “Identify objects and places that appear in screenshots.” However, we’re currently unsure what effect this is intended to have, as we are seeing Visual Intelligence hints in screenshots regardless of whether this switch is turned on. We’ll discuss this in an update to this book if and when we learn how it works.
• App Access: Use these controls to determine which apps Siri can access. (Everything is turned on by default.) Click or tap an app, and then use the switches to turn the features on or off:
  • Learn from this application: When this is on, Siri collects data about how you use the app to be used in suggestions elsewhere.
  • Show Siri Suggestions: A limited number of (mostly Apple) apps have another switch, the wording of which may vary, that you can use to determine whether suggestions from Siri show up in this app. Note that the wording (for example, “Suggestions from Messages” and “Allow suggestions and content from this app to appear in Search, Look Up, and on the Lock Screen”) makes it sound as though the switch controls whether content from this app appears in other apps, which may also be true, but that’s not the primary function of the switch.
• Turn Off Siri: Unlike in the previous two generations of Apple’s operating systems, you can no longer disable Apple Intelligence completely, and if you want to disable Siri (along with portions of Apple Intelligence), you must scroll to the bottom of the pane, click or tap the red Turn Off Siri button, read a long description of all the things that will stop working if you do, and then click or tap Turn Off Siri.

Even if you turn off Siri, “Visual Intelligence will continue to work but with more limited capabilities,” though Apple doesn’t spell out what those limitations are, and other Apple Intelligence features such as Write/Edit with Siri, Image Playground, and Shortcuts continue to work. All this is Apple’s heavy-handed way of pushing these new features, even if you actively dislike them and don’t ever want to use them.

One thing you might be surprised not to see here is a setting for the keyboard shortcut that invokes Siri on a Mac (see how Siri AI and Spotlight merged). Although you can change the Spotlight keyboard shortcut and the shortcuts used for Siri screenshots (in System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Spotlight and Screenshots, respectively), there’s no evident way to change the Siri shortcut to anything else.

Safari has several features that rely on Apple Intelligence, ranging from subtle (page highlights) to dramatic (describe an extension).

View page summaries

Safari offers Apple Intelligence-generated summaries for most webpages. Click or tap the Page icon on the left side of the address bar, then click or tap Summarize. Safari switches into Reader mode, with a brief summary at the top of the page.

Organize tabs automatically

Drowning in tabs? Safari can reduce clutter by grouping them. Enable this feature on a Mac by going to Safari > Settings > Tabs and choosing Automatically Create Topics from the “Organize tabs” pop-up menu; on an iPhone, tap the Tab Overview button, then tap the Filter button and choose Organize Tabs > Automatically Create Topics; on an iPad, tap the Tab Overview button, then tap the More button and choose Organize Tabs > Automatically Create Topics.

Having done that, browse normally—which, for most of us, means opening lots of tabs. Safari examines the contents of each page and groups them by similarity, reducing the amount of space open tabs take up. Click a group to expand its contents. (This grouping type apparently has no name.)

Use Notify Me to monitor pages for changes

Safari can monitor a webpage and let you know when it changes. To set a notification, click or tap the Page icon in the address bar and choose Notify Me. Describe the type of change you’re looking for (such as a new news article or a change in a particular number), click Edit to adjust when and how often Safari should check, and click Done. When Safari notices the change in question, a notification appears.

You can close the tab, but you must enable notifications for Safari in Settings > Notifications on iPhone or iPad, or System Settings > Notifications on a Mac to receive these…notifications.

Safari checks daily by default. You can tap Edit—either while creating the notification or afterward—to switch to hourly, weekly, or monthly checks, and set the time of day. Manage these notifications in Settings > Apps > Safari > Notify Me on iPhone or iPad, or System Settings > Apps > Safari > Notify Me on a Mac. Delete a notification by clicking or tapping the Edit link on the tracked page, then clicking and tapping Delete and confirming, or via the Settings link.

Describe an extension to create it

Can’t find the extension you need? Safari can create a custom extension for you on the fly. It syncs to your other devices via iCloud but can’t be shared with anyone else. To create an extension, click or tap the Page icon in the address bar and choose Describe an Extension. A new dialog appears.

Here, you can click one of the existing categories to get ideas or start from scratch by typing something in the “Describe something else” field at the bottom and clicking Next. Safari then displays a new page that may include existing extensions from the App Store that perform a similar function. Ignore those and click the Create button at the bottom. Safari churns for a bit, with a progress indicator at the top of the page. When it’s ready, you can click Try.

If you like what you see, click Save; if not, click Edit to describe changes. Each extension has its own toolbar icon, which you can use to invoke it later. If you use this extension on a page other than where you created it, you’ll be prompted to grant permission.

This is a cool feature, but a word of caution: you can’t create anything complex, like an ad blocker. Instead, it’s for small things like modifying the contents of a page or taking action on various text or graphics.

The Photos app has numerous Apple Intelligence features.

Collections

Collections is a mix of manually created items, metadata-sorted categories, pre-Apple Intelligence on-device machine learning selections, and new Apple Intelligence groupings. Click or tap Collections to see categories like Albums (created by you); Media Types (metadata); and People & Pets, Memories, and Trips (all machine learning). Featured Photos also appears, which is an album that adds new images daily from your library based on some kind of hidden algorithm about what Photos thinks you’d like best.

Collections includes a Utilities section, which is where you’ll find Apple Intelligence features.

Utilities

The Utilities section is a grab bag of things, including media that Photos can’t upload to iCloud, duplicated items, and recently saved ones. Apple Intelligence also makes use of this section by including categories it creates by analyzing your photo library.

You may not see all of these Utilities sets, depending on what’s in your Photos library.

Here are the Apple Intelligence-related groupings:

• Receipts: Photos of receipts as identified by Apple Intelligence appear here. On one of our devices, this category also showed a variety of other things, such as a junior-high report card, shipping labels, and even a plastic stake that came with a potted plant. The other saw letters photographed at library archives, shipping labels, and even pages from a book—but mostly receipts.
• Handwriting: Any photo containing what Apple Intelligence identifies as handwritten text is in this category. For one of us, this category was slightly more successful than Receipts, but not uniformly so. The other sees a fair number of images that had a handwriting font, and pictures of sushi and holiday cards.
• Identity Documents: Photos of passports, driver’s licenses (more formally, driver licenses), ID cards, debit and credit cards, and other documents that might serve to prove one’s identity appear here, with mixed success.
• Illustrations: Apple Intelligence apparently has a broad and eclectic view of what might be considered an illustration. Among other things, One of us saw photos of artwork from museums alongside drawings his kids made in first grade, graffiti, and even a furnace wiring diagram. The other, a printing and comics historian, found many printed cartoons and old line-drawing illustrations in his set.
• Documents: As with the Illustrations category, this shows anything vaguely document-like, as guessed by Apple Intelligence. For one of us, that included posters, menus, and signs—along with a carton of milk, a ketchup packet, and one of our kids holding a bag of chips. The other found the detritus of menus, screen captures, and pictures of his children being read books when young.

Generate reworked images

Apple offers three tools for taking a photo and generating new versions that add or remove information using generative imaging.

To use any of these tools, first select a photo and click Edit or tap the Edit button. Then click the Tools tab or tap the Tools button.

The first time you use any of these features, Photos must download the tool from Apple, which may take a few seconds to a few minutes. You should see a dialog that explains the delay.

All of these tools create new imagery based on existing data—you’re inventing parts of an image. That may be appropriate for personal images, or, once you consider it, you might not want to use any of these tools. Think about how the images will be received when shared, or if used in a professional, web, or print context, too.

Photos edited using artificial intelligence features (Clean Up, Extend, and Spatial Reframing) are invisibly tagged with a SynthID watermark.

Clean Up

The Clean Up tool in Photos lets you remove people and objects from the background of photos, automatically filling that space with new image information that blends seamlessly with the surroundings.

After selecting Clean Up, Photos may highlight certain areas of the photo with an animated, glowing effect. To remove one of those areas, click or tap it. You can also circle an object or brush over it with your pointer, finger, or Apple Pencil to remove it; the area may glow to indicate the selection. On a Mac, if the width of the Clean Up “brush” is too large or too small, use the Size slider.

Click or tap Clean Up to apply the changes. If and when you’re satisfied with the results: on a Mac, click Save Changes, then Done; on an iPhone or iPad, tap the yellow checkmark, then tap Done.

In this section, there’s also a Retouch brush that lets you smooth out details. However, it doesn’t use Apple Intelligence.

Reframe

If a photo was taken from an inauspicious angle, you can now adjust the angle—within limits—for a more pleasing effect, thanks to the Spatial Reframing feature of Apple Intelligence.

Select the Reframe tool. A glowing animation passes over the image. You can use your mouse or fingers to drag the image in any direction and watch as Photos dynamically fills in bits that were otherwise obscured. On a Mac, you can use Rotate, Pan, Straighten, and Zoom sliders, which also show the extent of the limits of how you can reframe the image. On an iPhone or iPad, use two fingers for zoom.

When you have the angle you want, click or tap Reframe.

Extend

Suppose a photo is cropped too narrowly, or that the subject is off-center. Photos can use Apple Intelligence to fill in areas adjacent to the area actually captured by generating new pixels that seamlessly blend in with what’s already in the photo. Select the Extend tool. Drag the frame to resize and/or reposition it and click or tap Extend. The results can be seemingly accurate or wildly disturbing.

Make Memories from prompts

You can make memories—rather, Memories with a capital M—using Apple Intelligence. Type a description, and Apple claims the feature will tell a coherent story sculpted from your photos and videos. To try this out, choose File > New Memory Movie, type a description, and wait to see what Photos comes up with.

One of us has had poor results with this feature, especially with music that bears no relation to the subject matter, but your experience may differ.

Use descriptive searches

Even if you never add a title or other metadata to an image in Photos, the app has long been able to figure out what (and who) is in it, so you could search for bridge or rainbow or dogs and usually get reasonable matches. Descriptive searching expands this concept, enabling you to type a whole phrase describing what you’re looking for, even if it involves a combination of attributes.

In our testing, this feature has been frighteningly accurate and helpful. We entered things like Morgen with the kids, Soren playing music, and California scenery and got results that meet those descriptions precisely.