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Technology
Oliver Haslam

Siri is about to get less (or more) frustrating to use with iOS 17

Siri on iOS

Apple's WWDC 2023 event brought with it plenty of new features and improvements across all of Apple's platforms, and Siri wasn't left out in the cold.

In fact, Apple is making a couple of changes to the way Siri works — and while one of them has the potential to be a big positive, the other could go either way.

According to Apple, Siri will soon respond to a simple "Siri" for the first time, removing the need to say "Hey" first. It'll also allow people to chain multiple commands together, too. But how will that pan out in use?

All change

Apple announced the change during the WWDC event and then confirmed it in the iOS 17 press release later.

"Siri can be activated by simply saying 'Siri,' Apple says. "Once activated, users can issue multiple commands in succession without needing to reactivate the assistant."

The first part changes the way people get Siri's attention and could reduce the friction caused each and every time the digital assistant is summoned. However, we'll have to reserve judgment given the possibility that the removal of one word could cause Siri to be accidentally triggered more often than is already the case. Time will surely tell in that regard.

The second part of the change is the most interesting. Being able to have Siri carry out multiple commands without having to say "Siri" before each one will be a huge improvement and we can't wait to take that for a spin ourselves. But again, the proof is in the pudding and we can only hope that this works as well as it has to potential to.

You'll of course need iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS 14 Sonoma, or watchOS 10 to make this all work. And those won't be made available to the public until later this year, unfortunately.

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