Quick Tips for Using Siri on Your Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are some quick tips for using Siri on your Mac. 

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So typically you could use Siri on your Mac for doing all sorts of different things. You would activate it by clicking on the Siri icon here at the upper right. Then you would ask Siri something. But there are a few different ways you can set this up. If you go into System Settings and then go to Siri & Spotlight. There are some settings here that you should look at. First, you can set Siri to listen for a voice command so you don't actually have to click anything or use a keyboard shortcut to activate it. What you're going to see here depends on what you have on your Mac. For instance here on my Mac Studio with a Studio display I have two different switches. One for headphones and one for the Studio Display microphone. You may just see one option here instead. When you turn this On then Siri is always listening. Then you can issue a command when using these two words here and then speak your question or command. 

You can also set a keyboard shortcut. Now what you see here maybe different depending upon your keyboard. For instance, on my MacBook Air I have the ability to use the Dictation Button at the top of the keyboard. That's not here on my Mac Studio because of the keyboard I'm using. But you can pick one of these. Note that these first two aren't typical keyboard shortcuts. You actually have to hold Command Space. A quick press of Command Space brings up Spotlight but holding it will bring up Siri. Then you could also go to Customize. Then set your own keyboard shortcut. 

You can set the language and voice to use for Siri. So, select Language here and you can select something different than the language settings for your Mac. Set this to the language that you actually speak because it is what it's going to use to try to understand what you said. Now separate from that you can set the voice Siri uses to talk to you. So, to do that click this Select button here.(Hi I'm Siri. Choose the voice you would like me to use.) Then choose the voice variety. What you see here is going to depend on your language setting. So with English being selected I can still choose one of these varieties here and then inside of one of those I can choose different voices. 

Now things really get interesting if you click the button here for Siri Responses. This gives you three switches. This can customize how you get a response from Siri. So first you can turn Off voice feedback. So Siri won't speak things to you. You'll still see the response here at the upper right hand corner. Having this switch turned On will give you what Siri says at the top right corner in addition to the results. Then this one here will actually show you what you said and this comes with some extra functionality. So with these switched On let's give this a try. (Weather in Santa Fe). So you can see here Siri was completely silent. It showed exactly what it thought I said. So this is a good way to troubleshoot. If you don't get the right answer it's useful to know that Siri didn't understand the words that you said and maybe you could try speaking clearer or say it in a different way. You also get the text here of what Siri would have spoken if I had that first switch turned On. Then you get the result. The weather in this case. 

Now because you asked it to put the text of what you said up here you have the ability to correct what you said if it got it wrong. You can click here and sometimes it would show you some alternatives. You can select one of those. But even if it doesn't show you alternatives you can still select the text there and then change it to something else, press Return, and now it gives you the results there. 

Now having the text that you said displayed is particularly useful when doing calculations to make sure that Siri heard you right. (127 plus 54) So I can check to make sure it heard me right right there. I could also select the text and change it to something else and get that result. 

Now if you think it's neat to type to correct Siri you could also type to ask Siri. You don't have to use your voice. To get access to that go into System Settings but instead of going to Siri & Spotlight go to Accessibility. There's a subcategory of Siri down under General in Accessibility. There you can turn on Type To Siri. So now when you activate Siri using either the button here or the keyboard shortcut, you're actually typing instead of speaking. So by turning this setting On then in the regular Siri settings having Siri responses set to have Voice Feedback turned Off and then these two On, then you have a completely silent Siri that gives you the maximum amount of information. 

This is particularly useful if you're in a work environment where other people can hear you talk or hear your computer say something. The same thing if you are using your Mac in a public place you'll want to keep your laptop and yourself quiet. 

My last tip is to use the Shortcuts App to create your own custom commands. So, I'll run Shortcuts here and I, of course, have all of these different shortcuts I created. Some are simple. Some are complex. But whatever you name them becomes a Siri command. For instance I have this one called I Want To Learn Something. If I go into that it just opens up the Wikipedia random entry page. So whenever I run this shortcut it will go to some random entry in Wikipedia. But I named it I Want To Learn Something because that is what I want to be able to say to Siri and then it would activate the shortcut. Now often, as soon as you create these shortcuts, it takes a little time for Siri to recognize it. It helps if you closeout the shortcut. Maybe quit the Shortcut's App. Maybe run the shortcut one time from the shortcut's menu there. But before too long you can actually speak that term and Siri will just run that shortcut. (I Want To Learn something. Okay). There we go. It takes me to a random Wikipedia page. 

So that's another reason to learn to use the Shortcut's App. You can create all sorts of custom things, name them appropriately, and then you just added a command to Siri. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.