“Hey Siri, play some news”

Siri has picked up the ability to instantly stream an appropriate daily news brief podcast when asked about what’s making news.

Originally added to the iOS 11.2.5 beta, this useful new feature has since rolled out to non-beta users in the US, UK and Australia. Supported news sources include ABC, SBS and Seven Network in the US and BBC News in the UK, among others.

To hear the latest news, say something like, “Hey Siri, play some news”, “Hey Siri, give me the news”, “Hey Siri, what’s the news today” or some such. This will stream a daily news podcast from NPR in the US and BBC News in the UK in the Podcast app, available free on App Store.

If you don’t have the app installed, Siri will play whatever you were last listening to.

You can ask for generic news from specific news sources, too—“Hey Siri, play some news from The Washington Post”—or for more specific business, sports or music news.

To try out this feature, you must be running iOS 11.2, the iOS 11.2.5 beta or the current stable version of iOS, which is iOS 11.2.2.

As mentioned, it doesn’t work when Siri is invoked manually by holding the Home or Side button because doing so will serve up your standard textual news headlines from Apple News or third-party web sources if Apple News is unavailable or not installed on the device.

This capability is going to be supported on the upcoming HomePod speaker as well.

Thanks, Carlos!