8 unexpected things we bet you didn't know Siri could do

By Anula Wiwatowska

Last updated 01 June 2021

We’re all getting a bit more used to our robot butlers right? Asking Siri to send a text message, or Google to set a timer doesn’t seem as jarring as it used to. But don’t go thinking you’ve got a handle on your handset houseman just yet because Siri can do way more than you think she can.

The breadth of what our pocket-sized stewards can do is far greater reaching than most of us realise. After all, if you’re going to make a smart assistant you’re going to want them to have the brains to go along with that moniker.

Here are eight interesting things that you probably didn’t know that Siri could do for you.

Make reservations

Finding a reservation has gotten exponentially harder since the pandemic came to town, and scrounging through sites isn’t fun at the best of times. Luckily though, Siri can make reservations for you.

Simply ask Siri to “make a reservation for tonight at [time] at [restaurant name]” . Using the booking service OpenTable, Siri will either make the reservation or give suggestions about other times that are available. Keep in mind that Siri uses your location data to ascertain which restaurant you’re talking about, so if you’re heading out of town you’ll want to be specific when mentioning your chosen establishment.

Tell you a bedtime story

If you have trouble getting to sleep, or you just want to embrace your inner child, why not ask Siri to “tell me a bedtime story”.

Being the saucy servitor she is, Siri might give you some tongue in cheek answers to start, but if you can be patient and ask a few times, eventually you’ll get a multi-paragraph story. There are a few stored away in her memory for you to get through.

Remember where you parked your car

The emergence of smartphones has personally helped me find my car more times than I would care to admit. But to be fair, that is just because I snap a picture of the level that I’m on - Siri has a more elegant solution.

Simply ask Siri, “remember where I parked my car” and Siri will save the location for you. We’re not entirely sure how this would stack up in multilevel car parks, or if you’re underground and reception isn’t too crash hot - but hey nothing ventured nothing gained.

We've heard of people using AirTags for the same purpose, but it's good to have options that don't involve spending more money.

Get Siri to create a password

Getting sick of coming up with your own passwords? Or even worse, do you just use the same password for everything? It’s probably time to change that and Siri can help.

Just ask Siri to “make me a password” and she will randomly generate a strong, eight-character password that you can take and use. If you go down this route make sure that you’re using a password manager because strong passwords aren’t easy to crack, nor are they easy to remember.

Remember “this”

No matter what you’re looking at on your phone, you can just ask Siri to “remember this” and she will save a reminder with the exact app, and content that you’re looking at.

Location based reminders

If you want to remember to do something when you’re at a specific location, then location-based reminders are great. It will require you to add some locations such as home, and work into your phone and turn on Location Services.

Then you can ask Siri to “remind me to put the slow cooker on when you get home”. Once your iProduct clocks that you have arrived at your chosen location, the reminder will fire off.

Save directly to Evernote

For Evernote users, you can dictate and send content to a document in your Evernote. You’ll just need to save your unique Evernote email address, and then ask Siri to “email Evernote”.

Anything you add to the body of your email will automatically be added to a new document in your Evernote account.

Pronounce names correctly

Hey, my name is Anula Wiwatowska - people can’t pronounce that, let alone AI. Luckily though you can add pronunciations to Siri. In order to do this, you can add Phonetic Names in your Contacts app.

Simply go to your contact, tap Edit, and scroll down to Add Field. Then you can add Phonetic First Name, or Phonetic Last Name (or in my case both).

When you have these fields, write out the names how they should be pronounced. For me, this looks a bit like this:

Phonetic first name: Ahnoolah
Phonetic last name: Vivahtovska

Once you’ve done this, it should be easier to conjure up these contacts and Siri should realise how to actually say them properly. If only you could train people so easily.