Apple’s virtual assistant Siri has been around for some time now and a lot of people don’t know that Siri has some very interesting and useful commands. Apple have never published a full list of commands for Siri but we managed to find almost all of them on the internet and pick out the best ones.
Find out what airplanes are currently flying above you. Ex.: “What airplanes are above me?”
Siri will search the live airplane map and tell you exactly what airplanes are flying above you. It’s not very useful but it’s still fun.
Flip a coin
Whenever you can’t make a decision on your own you can always ask Siri to flip a coin for you.
What does the fox say?
Siri may try to convince you that she doesn’t have a sense of humor but this video shows the opposite.
Now that we got the funny ones out of the way let’s see what Siri can really do. Since iOS 10 came out developers have been able to implement voice commands into their apps and now you can send messages VIA WhatsApp or make payments with Square Cash. You can view and customize which apps are granted access to Siri on your device under Settings > Siri > App Support.
- Pay [contact name] 10 dollars with Square Cash/PayPal/other app.
- Send a message using WhatsApp/LinkedIn/Skype/WeChat/etc.
- Call me an Uber/Lyft
- Show me photos in [app name].
Siri is also highly optimized for navigation and can be very useful when traveling. For example, if you say, “take me home” Siri will get the shortest path and display it on your phone. You can also use one of these when traveling:
- What is traffic like on the way home?
- Find [driving, walking, transit] directions to [destination].
- How do I get to [destination] by [walking, bus, bike, car, train…]?
- Where is [business name]?
- Where is the nearest [business type]?
- Find out how long until you arrive. Ex.: “What’s my ETA?”
- How much does gas cost right now?
You can also take pictures and change phone setting with simple commands:
- Increase/decrease brightness
- Turn on/off [Wifi, bluetooth, airplane mode…]
- Open [App]
- Take a picture
- Take a selfie
As you can see, Siri can be very useful if used in the right way. Here is one more pro tip before we finish up here. Siri can do fact checking very easily so if you ever get into an argument Siri can settle it in a matter of seconds. Just ask ”How many calories does a Big Mac have” or whatever you are arguing about.
If you think that we left out some important commands please feel free to post them in the comments below!
