Using voice control

Give commands to and ask questions of Siri, your voice-controlled assistant

You may be familiar with Siri if you own an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. You can ask the personal assistant to look up information, create a new reminder or calendar event, send a message and much more using just your voice. Siri makes it easy to get many common tasks done without having to move the pointer around the screen, click things or type details in a window.

There are several ways to initiate a conversation with Siri. Even if you aren’t much of a fan of keyboard shortcuts, we strongly recommend you try to memorise Siri’s. If your hands spend a lot of time on the keyboard, you can call on Siri in an instant, check the information it provides, then press

to dismiss its window and return to whatever you were doing.

Correcting Siri

You can also use Siri to search for files based on simple terms, without having to type criteria in Spotlight or in a Finder search window to find items within a range of dates or which have a certain tag attached.

There’s one thing that’s useful to keep in the back of your mind. If Siri should slightly misinterpret you, there’s no need to repeat yourself. Instead, double-click the mistaken word at the top of its window, correct it with the keyboard, then press to rerun your command. Now, let’s get started.

When you call upon Siri’s assistance, its window slides into view at the top right of the desktop.