MacMost: Siri

You can customize how Siri works with a variety of settings. You can have Siri respond to different keyboard shortcuts or just your voice. You can also have Siri reply silently and let you make corrections if it misheard you. You can create your own Siri commands with Shortcuts.

Learn how to get random numbers on your Mac using the Calculator app, the Numbers app, Siri, the Terminal and a custom Shortcut.

When creating Shortcuts for the Mac or iOS you can use voice input easily when you trigger the Shortcut with Siri.

Siri can be a good tool to help you increase your productivity if you give it a chance. You can ask for information, search the web, get to files, folders and settings. You can also use it to schedule events, add reminders, send messages and emails. You can use Siri completely silently if you set it up right.

Learn 10 Siri commands for your Mac that may be faster than doing the same thing using the cursor and keyboard. You can open folders and files, get answers to calculation, schedule events and set reminders, and send messages or emails.

You can quickly and easily create reminders from email messages, web pages and documents to remind you to complete a task at a later time. The notification you receive will link you directly back to the content. You can also use this for Maps locations, Messages and a variety of other items on your Mac.

The Shortcuts app from Apple allows you to create your own Siri Shortcuts from building blocks. A large gallery of sample shortcuts is a good place to start to learn about using shortcuts. When you select a shortcut from the gallery, you customize it while adding it to your active shortcuts. You can then trigger it with Siri or pressing a widget button.

The simplest way to take advantage of the new Siri Shortcuts feature in iOS 12 is to just use one of the suggestions in the Settings app. You can look through a list of recent activity and quickly create a shortcut from that, assigning a Siri trigger phrase to use the shortcut over and over again.

A new feature of Siri in iOS 11.2.5 is the ability to listen to short news podcasts with a simple command. You can use "play" or "tell" to trigger these podcasts even if you don't subscribe to them. You can also get business and sports news. This feature should come to the Mac soon, and is most likely being added now in preparation for the release of the HomePod.

A new feature in iOS 11 is the ability for Siri to translate your speech into Mandarin, French, German, Italian or Spanish. You can simply ask Siri to translate a word or phrase. Siri will speak the translation aloud, which could help you communicate while traveling. You can also see the text in both languages on the screen.

A new feature in macOS High Sierra gives us the ability to type to ask Siri questions, instead of requiring us to speak audibly to her. This is handy if you are in a noisy environment, wearing headphones, or just like to put more thought into your requests.

Siri can be a useful tool for performing tasks on your Mac without needing to type or navigate through apps. You can ask Siri to launch apps, change preferences, do math, check email, play music, search for files and photos and many other computing tasks. You can also ask Siri to look up information online.

While e-books in iBooks are not supposed to be a substitute for audiobooks, it is possible to get iBooks to speak text to you. If you select enough text, you can make this an occasional alternative to reading with your eyes.

With Sierra you can easily ask Siri to set reminders. If you want Siri to remind you of an email, event, contact, message or webpage, you can use the word 'this' to have Siri create a reminder with a link to that content. This can be very useful to remind yourself to get back to something later in the day.

On your Mac you can save your Siri results so they appear in the Notifications Center. Results such as weather, stock prices, world times and news will automatically update to show current information.

If Siri mispronounces your name, you can teach it the proper pronunciation easily. You can also teach Siri how to pronounce other names in your contacts. Soon, with macOS Sierra, you can do the same on your Mac.

Siri keeps getting better and better. Here are some things that you may now know Siri can help you with. For instance, you can get random numbers, create and populate lists, get baseball statistics, set recurring events and more.

Here's a preview of what Siri on the Mac will look like. The latest beta of macOS Sierra lets you use Siri for most things that you can do on iOS. In addition, you can search your files, photos, the Web and System Preferences. You can send messages and post to social media. You can save Siri answers to Notifications Center and multitask while Siri is on the screen.

Both Google and Microsoft offer voice assistant apps that you can download for your iPhone or iPad for free. Google's app offers some advantages over Siri, but neither app can match Siri because of Siri's connection to your built-in iPhone apps.

With the help of Siri on your iPhone, you can listen to and reply to text messages without ever looking at or touching your iPhone's screen. This can be useful when cycling or running, or just quicker than typing. Setting up your contacts correctly can help.