| Cult of Mac

How to stop Siri from randomly activating all the damn time

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An Apple Watch with Siri Activated and the caption:
Siri always interrupts at the wrong time.
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

How can you stop Siri from randomly turning on? As if Siri’s unhelpful answers were not irritating enough when you actually want them, Siri often interrupts a conversation, meeting or TV show when you haven’t asked for anything at all. How do you stop Siri from activating all the time?

Apple’s ‘Hey Siri’ trigger phrase might soon shrink

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Apple’s AI-driven voice-controlled digital assistant Siri
Activating Siri may soon get simpler.
Image: Apple
WWDC23

The “Hey Siri” trigger phrase for Apple’s virtual assistant could go away soon, replaced with a shorter version. And the change might be announced at WWDC23 next week.

Being able to activate Siri by simply saying “Siri” near an iPhone, HomePod, etc., could make activating Apple’s virtual assistant easier.

Apple wants to shorten ‘Hey Siri’ trigger phrase to simply ‘Siri’

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Siri may be in for new voice lessons soon.
Siri could become easier to summon in the future.
Photo: Apple

Apple is working on changing the “Hey Siri” hotword to just plain “Siri,” and the change could roll out as early as next year.

Introduced in 2015 with the iPhone 6s, the “Hey Siri” hotword remains unchanged to this day. You also can use the phrase to invoke Apple’s voice assistant on the Mac, iPad, HomePod and Apple Watch.

Your iPhone can alert you to breaking glass, smoke alarms and other dangers

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Get alerts for alarms, door bells, dogs, appliances and more.
Get alerts for alarms, door bells, dogs, appliances and more.
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

The other day I was walking with music blasting through my AirPods when I almost stepped in front of a speeding ambulance.

Luckily, the magical Sound Recognition feature on my iPhone was turned on and my AirPods recognized the wailing sirens. They silenced the music and piped the sirens into my ears instead, saving my bacon. It was amazing and quite magical.

Your iPhone can also listen and alert you for crying babies, running water, knocks on the door, barking dogs and more.

Here’s how to use it.

Studio Display adds ‘Hey Siri’ to older Mac models, has 64GB of storage

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Apple Studio Display
That seems like a lot of storage space for a monitor.
Photo: Apple

Studio Display’s surprisingly powerful internals allow it to enable “Hey Siri” on a number of older Mac models that don’t usually support the feature — including the 2019 Mac Pro and several Mac mini variants.

Users also discovered that Studio Display has a surprisingly large (64GB) amount of internal storage. We already knew that it runs the same version of iOS 15.4 as iPhone, but still, all that space seems pretty overkill.

How to change the iOS 14 or iPadOS 14 default email application

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How to change iOS default email application
Changing the iPhone or iPad default email application is now possible. And easy.
Graphic: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Apple just removed one of the biggest remaining restrictions from the iPhone and iPad. It’s finally possible to change the default email application in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 to something other than Apple Mail.

Making the change is easy. However, a current limitation will delay many people from taking immediate advantage of it.

Apple’s unreleased over-the-ear headphones spotted in iOS 14 code

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airpods-max
Apple's making its own headphones to rival Beats.
Photo: 9to5Mac

The clearest look yet at Apple’s upcoming over-the-ear headphones was unearthed from an early build of iOS 14 this week.

Icons for Apple’s unreleased over-the-ear headphones were spotted by 9to5Mac, revealing a few features about the headphones’ design as well as a possible timeframe on when they might launch to the public.