In the introduction of the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, Apple said that you can now type to Siri if you don’t want to talk to it. Great. How do I enable this feature?
Hey Siri, how do I enable type-to-Siri?
I don’t understand ‘how do I enable type to Siri’
Oh well, that would have been easy! Instead, I’ll show you how to do it because, well, human versus AI. 🙂
I’ll also note that while some people might read this and scratch their heads, trying to figure out why you would want to type and interact via keyboard with a voice assistant, I completely understand: there are a lot of environments where it’s just not practice or appropriate to talk to your device, however quietly. Apple’s putting so much effort into making Siri smart and capable, able to understand natural language queries and requests, why wouldn’t you want to have access to that through whatever means you prefer?
Nonetheless, the setting you seek is in Accessibility on your iPhone – in iOS 11 – so apparently even Apple thinks it’s a useful feature, but not for the majority of users. But here’s the thing: even with Type to Siri enabled you can still say “hey Siri” and use it as a voice-based interface anyway. The best of both worlds.
Let’s change it up so you can see how it works! To start, go to “Settings” on your iPhone or iPad:
See the entry for “Siri & Search”? That’s not the one you want, confusingly enough. Instead, tap on “General” to proceed.
That will give you a lot more options and you’ll need to swipe down until you can see:
The entry you want is on the bottom: “Accessibility“. There are, however, plenty of other things to check out here if you’re curious, including the ability to change what happens when you press the Home Button, but we’re going to stay on task, so tap on “Accessibility”.
You’ll need to swipe down a bit to find the area we seek. Look for “Home Button“:
The entry you want to change is actually immediately below Home Button: Tap on “Siri” and you’ll see the options available:
The first one’s obvious – so enable it. The Voice Feedback offers some interesting options, and manages what happens when you type in a query to Siri. Does Siri then speak the results? Does Siri speak the results only if you have sound enabled? Or does Siri never respond with a voice to a typed query? I tried each setting and ultimately settled on “Hands-Free Only” as the most logical option. With that chosen, if you type, Siri will type back. If you talk (e.g., “hey siri!”) then it’ll talk back to you. Seems reasonable!
With that all set up, let’s give it a whirl! A double-tap on the Home Button and Siri now prompts me to type in a query:
That’s pretty cool, actually! Now to see if Siri can play Adventure, a classic text exploration game… 🙂
Dave
This is great, except it turns off the ability to speak to Siri! Can you set I tup so you can both type and speak commands to Siri?
It shouldn’t shut it off. Have you tried just saying “hey siri”? [note: You need to enable the hey siri feature]
Tapping the microphone button on the keyboard display is one option.