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

Siri on iOS
(Image credit: Christine Romero-Chan / iMore)

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.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.