I really want to have access to Siri on my MacBook Air. I’m running Sierra, but it’s not showing up anywhere. How do I get Siri running on my Mac?
Well, I asked Siri on my Mac how you can enable Siri on your computer, and unfortunately she didn’t have much to say other than “I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that.” 🙂
More seriously, you do definitely need to be running the very latest version of Mac OS X, now known as simply macOS. You can check by going to About This Mac from the Apple Menu on the top left. It’ll explicitly say if you’re running Sierra, but you can also tell by the operating system version number: 10.12.x is Sierra.
Now, once you have confirmed you have the right version of macOS, go back to the Apple Menu and choose “System Preferences…” then look for a new preference roughly in the middle of the window called…. ta daaa! Siri.
Look for the weird voice wave icon:
Click on it to open up the Siri System Preferences pane:
The most important control is on the left side: Check the box adjacent to “Enable Siri“. Now it’s running!
Double check that the Mic input is a valid choice or device on your system, and that the language and voice are to your liking. I happen to like the Australian female voice (try it!) with Siri and have the same setting on my iPhone too.
The question then becomes how do you get to it? I suggest as a first step that you check on “Show Siri in menu bar” near the bottom of the window. A tiny Siri icon then shows up on the top menu bar:
It’s definitely subtle!
Before you close the window, however, I suggest that you look at your options for keyboard shortcut and pick one (or set your own custom shortcut):
I’ve opted for Fn + Space. Easy enough.
Whether you click the Siri icon on the menu bar or use your newly set keyboard shortcut, however, launch Siri and she’ll dutifully sit and listen for your request:
Alright, let’s find out! “Who won the world series?”
That’s spot on, Siri. Pretty good for an Aussie voice system AI. Still, though, Siri can’t know everything:
So there ya go. And a handy tip: launch Siri then don’t say anything. After a moment or two it’ll prompt you with some of the things it can do in the macOS universe, very helpful!