Using Siri

Introduction: Now, let’s take a look at how we use Siri on the Mac. Let’s go to My Mac. You’ll notice in the dock that you have Siri here. If you’re using macOS Sierra, you will not see Siri; you need to be using macOS High Sierra or macOS Mojave. You’re also going to use Siri as a menu extra up in the menu bar. To use Siri, you click on it and then ask your question.

My nephew is playing for the Los Angeles Rams. I want to see how the Rams are doing. They started out strong. Let’s see how they’re doing. I click on it. How are the Rams doing?

Siri: Rams appear to be in first place in the NFC West right now, with a record of 11 and three.

In addition to asking for sports or weather, you can also ask for different files that you’ve worked on. I want to see what files I’ve worked on this week. Now I’m going to ask you what files I’ve worked on this week. What files have I worked on this week?

Siri: Here are all of the files that were modified for this week?

Now, we can see the files that I’ve worked on. If you’re curious at what you can say to Siri, all you have to do is ask her, what can I say? Let’s go ahead and do that. What can I say? Here are some of the things I can ask Siri. Show me my downloads folder, make the screen brighter. I can use it for messages; I can set up a meeting with Calendar. Now you’re going to notice that the right of each one of these, we have the little arrow. This means that there are more suggestions. Let’s go over to my Calendar here. I’m going to click on the arrow.

Now we can see we have a number of different suggestions we can use for Siri. There are preferences for Siri; they’re in the system preferences. What I’m going to do is I’m going to ask Siri to open up my system preferences. Open my system preferences. We can see that my system preferences are open. Now what we’re going to do is we’re going to go to Siri, let’s see what options we have.

Setting A Keyboard Shortcut: I can set a keyboard shortcut. In this case, it is holding down command and space. If I hold down the command key and the space key simultaneously, it’ll start Siri. I can set what language, I can set Siri’s voice, and then I can also set if I want to use voice feedback. You heard how Siri came back with the results, such as how the Rams were doing. If you didn’t want to have that feedback, you can turn this off. I’m going to turn this off, and then you can also set if you want to show Siri in the menu bar as a menu extra.

Now that I have this off, let’s ask Siri what the weather will be like for this week. I go up to Siri here. What’s the weather going to be like for this week? If you heard, Siri didn’t come back with feedback. I can read the feedback. I can read what the weather is going to be, but she didn’t make any comments. If you’re working in an office environment or don’t want to hear Siri when you ask for something, you can turn that off. Again, that’s in the system preferences.

That’s how we use Siri on the Mac.