“Hey, Siri”

Siri comes to the Mac – now you’re talking!

Having been a cornerstone of the iOS experience for several years, Apple’s virtual assistant Siri is now baked into macOS. As long as you have a way to talk to your Mac (using a built-in or external mic), you can give it commands, such as to display weather reports, locate documents, or add events to Calendar.

On macOS, Siri lives in the Dock and the menu bar and is triggered with a click, or you can activate it by holding ç+[ spacebar] for a moment. That’s the same combo that opens Spotlight when pressed and released quickly, so Siri’s System Preferences pane offers a couple of alternative shortcuts that you can simply press in order to avoid confusion, or you can define your own shortcut. However, make sure it doesn’t clash with one you use elsewhere.

Barking “Hey, Siri!” at your Mac is absent, but there is a workaround. First, this requires you to be using a normal shortcut – one you press for an instant response, rather than hold down – so make that change first. Next, turn on Dictation in Keyboard prefs, and Use Enhanced Dictation (which may require a download).

By your command

Open the Accessibility pane, select Dictation on the left, enable the use of a dictation keyword phrase, and use “Hey” for said phrase. Next, click Dictation Commands, turn on ‘Enable advanced commands’, and click + to create a new one. In the top field, type ‘Siri’ (without quotes). In the Perform pop-up menu, choose Press Keyboard Shortcut, then press the Siri shortcut you set earlier, and finally click Done.

The Dictation icon will appear in the menu bar, and you can now say “Hey, Siri” to activate the feature, rather than having to press keys like some kind of tech caveman.