Siri

Elgato Eve Energy review: a HomeKit-enabled wireless sensor & switch

Andrew O'Hara ∙ February 23, 2016

Apple’s HomeKit has had a bit of a rocky start. The home automation platform that was meant to tie all of your smart home devices together was plagued by delays from Apple, as well as manufacturers. Devices started to hit the market in the middle of last year, and this year at CES, we saw many new options that are slowly starting to trickle out. Today, we are going to take a look at one of those devices, Eve Energy from Elgato. It is a simple solutions for those who want to start or grow their smart home, without breaking the bank.

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Apple TV universal search gains support for Watch ABC and 3 additional Disney channels

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 23, 2016

A newly updated Apple support document has indicated that owners of the fourth-generation Apple TV have just gained the ability to search videos across four new content sources, Watch ABC and three major Disney properties: Disney Channel, Disney Jr and Disney X.D.

Users who have one of these channel apps installed on their device can now take advantage of Siri and tvOS's universal search to have shows like “Modern Family” surfaced in their search results.

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How to select Siri voices for VoiceOver, Speak Screen and Speak Selection features

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 17, 2021

I'm not hearing impaired but that doesn't prevent me from taking advantage of certain VoiceOver features on my iPhone. For instance, I sometimes use Speak Selection to get iOS to read a book to me as I'm surfing the web, or doing something else.

Being a non-native English speaker, I also rely on that feature to have my iPhone read aloud words and phrases whenever I'm unsure about their correct pronunciation, which is a lot of help—especially with the adjustable pitch and speaking rate.

Starting with iOS 8, a number of options for the Siri voices you can use for the VoiceOver, Speak Screen and Speak Selection features became available. This tutorial explains how to choose a voice for Speak Screen and Speak Selection and adjust voices for VoiceOver.

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Apple’s all-new Remote app for Apple TV 4 will do Siri, gestures and work in games

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 15, 2016

Apple is working on a brand new Remote app for the fourth-generation Apple TV that will be a full replacement for the functions provided by the included Siri Remote, said Eddy Cue, Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services, who was joined on The Talk Show podcast with Daring Fireball's John Gruber by Craig Federighi, Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering.

The upcoming software will be a new app, not an update to the existing Remote application for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad which in December 2015 gained keyboard and basic navigation support for the new Apple TV.

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This tweak displays Siri suggestions in all iOS Spotlight interfaces

Anthony Bouchard ∙ February 5, 2016

Starting in iOS 9, Apple introduced Siri Suggestions in the updated Spotlight interface, which is accessed to the left of the first Home screen page.

Interestingly, despite the new Spotlight interface, Apple kept the original Spotlight interface that you can access by pulling down from the top of the screen, and as you might imagine, it doesn't have all the new bells and whistles the new Spotlight interface does.

A new jailbreak tweak called NearbyNews is now available in Cydia's BigBoss repository for $0.99 that will let you bring these features to the original Spotlight interface in iOS 9.

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Siri making random outbursts? Here’s the fix

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated May 29, 2019

It's happened many times to me before, and I can relate to those that it happens to – you're trying to be quiet in the middle of class or in the middle of a meeting for work, and all of a sudden you hear a random noise and then Siri starts blabbering.

Siri says "I didn't quite get that," or "Sorry, I missed that."

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to solve this problem once and for all.

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How to filter mature language for Siri and Dictation

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated September 7, 2023

Sometimes when you use the dictation feature on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad—or just converse with Siri and it misunderstands you—you might be in for a surprise seeing explicit language that you don't really want others to see, especially if you talk to Siri on your new Apple TV and kids are present.

Fortunately, both iOS and tvOS give you all the controls you need to prevent profanities from showing up when you use speech-to-text or Siri. In this post, you'll learn how to disable explicit language for Siri and Dictation on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad and filter out explicit language for Siri on your Apple TV.

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How to use Siri to toggle system settings

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated January 24, 2018

Siri is the personal voice assistant pre-installed on your iOS device. Introduced in iOS 5, the voice assistant allows a wide variety of functions, conversions, information queries, and fun comments to be invoked with just your voice.

But did you know Siri can also be used to toggle certain system settings on or off too? In this tutorial, we'll show you how.

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Need a coin toss or roll of the dice? Have Siri do it

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated August 20, 2018

When it comes right down to it, you may not always have a coin or a die in your pocket, but fortunately, you probably have your iPhone with you, and all recent iPhones can take advantage of the pocket voice assistant Siri.

Siri is a powerful tool, and you may not have known this, but if you forgot your coin and die at home, Siri has you covered for all of your chance-taking needs – she never forgets hers! In this tutorial, we'll show you how to have Siri flip a coin or roll a die for you.

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How to teach Siri how to call you

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated January 16, 2018

Siri is a great way to get to the things you want on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad without having to tap on anything – it works great for situations where you don't really have your hands free, but who says using Siri has to be boring?

In this quick post, we'll show you how you can spice up your conversations with Siri by configuring the voice assistant to call you something different.

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