Fix Siri bugs
Siri is good at recognizing commands, but sometimes things go wrong. Siri doesn’t understand what you’re saying or writes down an incorrect word. This is especially common when recognizing names. Fortunately, you can fix this by capturing the pronunciation of phonetic names in Siri. But what do you do with other words that Siri does not understand well or if Siri cannot correctly recognize your question? In that case you can correct a word or correct a mistake. This tip explains how that works.
- Correct Siri
- Customize Siri question
- Customize Siri command
- Multiple languages
Correct Siri
Siri can just misunderstand a word. Siri often knows that something is not quite right and shows dotted lines under the word. You can then tap this to edit the word. You will also receive a number of suggestions that you can tap if the desired question is listed. If not, you can use the keyboard to correct a wrong word.
Customize Siri question
It may also happen that Siri has completely misunderstood the question or that you want to use a complicated word that is not recognized correctly every time. With every question you ask Siri, you get the option to make a correction. You must have enabled the transcription of your assignment for this. This means that your voice command is always written out, so that you can see what you are saying. You enable this as follows:
- Go to Settings > Siri & Search.
- Tap Siri Responses.
- Turn on the switch next to Always show speech.
In the future, you can tap on your written voice command to manually change it. You can remove part of your voice command yourself or add words to it.
This also comes in handy if you want to use Siri without sound: once you’ve activated Siri with a question, you can continue endlessly by manually changing the question to Siri and reading the answers on the screen.
In that case, it’s smart to turn off Siri’s voice feedback via Settings > Siri & Search > Siri Responses > Voice Responses.
Customize Siri commands
If you want to send a message or set a reminder and the text is not quite correct, you can make a change before agreeing. You then have to record the entire command again, so it doesn’t work if you want to change small details: “change Jan to Kees”, “change bananas to pears” or “change Tuesday to Wednesday” usually doesn’t work.
In that case it is better to start all over again and to speak the text correctly in one go. To change this, simply say Edit to Siri when prompted to send the message or add the event to your calendar. You can then record your assignment again.
Siri issues with multiple languages
Siri can also trip over sentences that contain multiple languages, for example a Dutch question that contains an English word. In that case, it is best to manually correct your question after recording. If you only want to ask questions in English from now on, it is more convenient to change the Siri language setting completely to English via Settings > Siri and search > Language. You don’t have to change the language of your iPhone to English for this, just changing the Siri language is enough.
