Type To Siri in High Sierra

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.

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Video Transcript: Now one of the best features added back at the introduction of Mac OS Sierra was Siri. Having Siri on the Mac has been great except there's been one really annoying thing. You have to use your voice to activate it. You're sitting there in front of a keyboard. You can use your keyboard to search in Spotlight, you can use it to search the web, but Siri needs your voice. 
Well, this has been corrected in Mac OS High Sierra. Now with Sierra and in High Sierra you can still activate Siri and as long as you ask the first question with your voice you can type the second question. Weather. Okay here's the weather for today. Now I can click where it says weather and I can ask something else. So you can type to ask Siri a question but the first one has to be audio. It's very frustrating. 
However, now in High Sierra you can go to System Preferences, go to Accessibility, and there's Siri listed under Accessibility. You can enable Type to Siri. So what this does is that it takes away the voice activation except if you're using a Bluetooth headset. For some reason they're keeping so that if you use a Bluetooth headset and activate Siri that way you can use your voice. Otherwise when you turn this on now Siri simply has you type.
So you can see it's not listening for my voice at all but I can type what I want. Here's the forecast for today. And I can continue to type. So, for me this is a lot more convenient. I'm going to switch to this because I can type very quickly and you know if I'm listening to music or if I'm in a busy office where there's other people around I'd like to be able to type on my Mac and ask Siri a question rather than to speak to Siri.

Comments: 4 Responses to “Type To Siri in High Sierra”

John

8 years ago

Is there a difference in capability (quality of response) between Siri and spot light?

Gary Rosenzweig

John: Depends on what you are searching for. Files? Web info? Something else? Just try some comparisons and see for yourself. Let us know what you find.

Becky

I don't have Siri listed in Accessibility. I'm running 10.12.6. What could be wrong?

Becky: 10.12 is Sierra. You need to upgrade to High Sierra (10.13) for this to be an option.

Comments Closed.

Type To Siri in High Sierra

Comments: 4 Responses to “Type To Siri in High Sierra”

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