The iOS 9 GM includes a new feature for Siri to help it better recognize your voice when using the automatic ‘Hey Siri’ activation feature. On all current iPhones, you can activate Siri by saying ‘Hey Siri’ when the device is plugged in to power. On the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, the ‘Hey Siri’ activation feature works all the time, plugged in or not, thanks to new dedicated components inside the latest iPhones meaning it can be ‘always on’.
This makes the addition of voice training particularly relevant. In previous OS versions, Hey Siri would just work if you toggled a switch in Settings. With the GM, the OS now prompts you to go through a few training exercises before the feature will be enabled. Some readers have claimed that this feature is like Voice ID, so that Hey Siri function will only respond when the true owner of the phone speaks to it. Whilst this would be a nice feature, we cannot reproduce this and believe it is only meant to improve general detection accuracy.
It is true that the iOS screens describing the feature are ambiguous. It says “this helps Siri recognise your voice” which could be interpreted as meaning your voice only. However, the statement is vague enough such that it could also mean overall improvements to Siri voice detection on the device, not specifically the current user.
The training screen is quite simple. iOS asks you to say several different phrases in a row. Siri will listen each time and you can only proceed once it has detected the pronunciation of the phrase. If you are unclear in your speech, the training system will ask you to repeat the phrase. There are about five steps in total. After that, the Hey Siri feature is activated as normal.
After training, I tested to see if Siri would recognise only the owner and ignore other people. In my experience, it made no difference — Siri continued to respond to other people (with varying accents, men and women) as usual. Maybe it will stop some false positives from arising but it can’t be relied on.
Whether it makes a difference or not for Hey Siri recognition is harder to test. The detection of ‘Hey Siri’ was always reliable for me through iOS 8 and continues to be good after this training process. Let us know in the comments if you have tried this out and are now getting noticeably different results when using ‘Hey Siri’.
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the hands-free Siri is one of the features i’m most excited about
oh, and is it me or it seems like Apple is doing everything it takes to get rid of the home button for the next iPhone? Siri goes hands-free, pressure sensitive display, rumored OLED display and bezel-less design. the touch ID sensor can be easily placed behind the display and if it’s OLED it can light up just a few pixels to show you where to place your fingertip
I thought the same thing during the keynote. So far with the iPhone 6s and iOS9, they’ve eliminated the necessity of the home button for:
1) Long Press for Siri activation (now just say “Hey Siri”)
2) Double Press for getting to the multitasking window (Now just push hard on the side of the screen)
That leaves Touch ID verification and a new model for the single press “home”. (possibly push hard at the bottom of the screen?)
+1 on the thinking about that. I guess that’s what 7’s design is going to be about? And maybe they’ll remove the audio jack, so they can cut it to 6mm, as the latest leaks suggested? Wow, I just imagined that – bezel-less, no home button, only glass (OLED?), no audio jack, extremely thin and light (probably they’ll go for 99 grams, or somewhere below 100 grams). Then, they’ll release at least 100 million sales in the first quarter!
You have tested if after the setup process recognize only your ‘Hey Siri’?
I have tested with mine and my boss, and it works great. Mine only works with my voice, and my bosses only works with his voice
Seems to work well; if I use a false voice, it wont activate. Now I don’t have to worry about tech podcasters remotely activating Siri :)
Well, I went through the process on two iPhone 6 devices that I have. On the first, the steps went fine. The second had me repeating the phrases. No other change when it comes to issuing commands though; it responds even to my sister’s voice. On a side-not: I can no longer teach Siri the correct pronunciations of names. She keeps saying that she’s having trouble understanding that. In iOS 7 I could teach her. Since iOS 8 and 9, nope. Anyone with the same issue?
Doesn’t work – I set it up and followed “her” instructions … my wife can easily activate her – and we do not have same voices ;) … so it doesn’t work here.
I still remember setting up VOICE logins in the pre-“OS X” Mac OS for my toddlers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anodG6lbOdY
Mac voice commands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1bmZLePhCs
Does Siri still chirp when activated? I can’t believe that there’s no way to deactivate the audible chirp. I’m a sound engineer, and have had many sessions interrupted when someone on the set inadvertently held their home button down, or says anything like “Hey Siri.” You would think that silent mode, or even “do not disturb” would defeat this. It scares me that “Hey Siri” on the new phones is always on.
Siri does not make a sound when activated with iOS 9. The phone simply vibrates subtlety in your hand.
Oh! Okay. Good info. That’s important. It’s good because the loud accidental chirp was always something to be scared of when your phone was supposed to be otherwise silent. But also: Now, with the always-on “Hey Siri,” it will eliminate the prank factor. I mean that it won’t do people a lot of good to just walk around yelling HEY SIRI! and see how many phones they can get to respond, because no one will be able to hear other peoples’ phones respond. That eliminates the whole point. Which is good.
Problem of user distinction solved, device distinction still a problem:
If I have two devices with hey Siri activated in the same area, both react… A possible solution would be that if two devices (with same iCloud account) get activated by the voice command, each one would give that information to the other devices before Siri reacts, and then determine the nearest by the voices level each device receives. Then only the nearest could respond.
Another option, instead of voice level detection could be to let Siri ask you on each device simultaneously which one was meant by asking for the device type (iPad, iPhone, etc…): “On what device do you want to ask me something?” – “iPad”
A last idea would be to let Siri ask first from the nearest device “did you mean me?” If users answers “yes”, the user could go on with further commands on that device, or if he answers “no”, the next device would ask the same question and so on …
Just a thought, but maybe I am the only one with this “problem” ;)
Drove me crazy for the longest time when my iPad would be plugged in and I was watching the news anytime a reference to Syria came on Hey Siri would yell out “sorry I didn’t quite catch that”
Used it with my wife and my phone would not react to her saying “Hey Siri” only my voice would activate it. I have an American accent and she has a South African accent though if it makes a difference.
Has anyone else noticed ‘hey siri’ in iOS 9.1 PB 1 does not work if phone is faced down? (6 plus)
For some strange reason, my iPhone 6 is able to recognize “hey Siri” even when I am not plugged in to power. Not complaining or anything but I just thought that feature is reserved for iPhone 6S
Just Jailbreak and you get handsfree Siri always.
I can’t wait to walk into an Apple store and yell “Hey Siri” now..
Curious… How are some of you able to program “Hey Siri” voice recognition when iOS 9 has yet to be released? Are you beta testers or something? I’m running iOS 8.4.1 and I don’t see any programming prompts for voice recognition when enabling Siri on my phone 6 plus.
I still need to have my iPhone 6 plugged in. I thought this new update allowed for “Hey Siri” to work without being plugged into power?