22 Siri commands (almost) every AirPod user needs

Want to get the most out of the Apple AirPods you received over the holiday season? Here are 22 Siri commands you need to know about.

Call (person name)

Siri on your AirPods will let you dial a call to anyone who is in your Contacts book.

Where am I?

Lost? Trying to navigate a new city? Or are you just looking to tell someone else where they will be able to find you? Ask Siri “Where am I?” and your AirPods will let you know.

What’s the weather?

Siri will tell you what today’s weather will be where you are. Or ask it for the weather conditions for somewhere else, as in” “What’s the weather in (place name)?”

Take me to (place name)

If you create contact details containing addresses, you can ask Siri to take you to those addresses using phrases such as “Take me to Sarah’s,” or “Take me home.”

You can also ask Siri to direct you from where you are to specific locations, such as the name of your hotel when you travel. Siri will speak your directions to you.

What’s the battery life of my (device)?

As long as it’s an Apple device, you can ask Siri how much battery life you have remaining. “What’s the battery life of my iPhone?” or “What’s the battery life of my Apple Watch” and so on.

Control music playback

Use Siri to raise and lower volume, play (or repeat) tracks, play music from specific artists, playlists or genres. “Hey Siri, play me Leonard Nimoy’s greatest hits,” for example. You can also skip tracks and pause them, ask Siri to name a song that’s playing, or tell it you like (or dislike) a particular track.

Send a Message to (person name)

You can use Siri on your AirPods to send messages to people, including Messages and emails. Just ask it to send the message and it will ask you what you want to say. It will then repeat the message to you so you can confirm it is correct.

Announce Messages

Siri on AirPods can read incoming text messages to you. The feature also lets you dictate your response. The feature must be enabled in Settings>Siri & Search>Announce Messages.

When enabling this you also decide from whom messages will be announced, selecting between: Favorites, Recents, Contacts or Everyone. I tend to use Favorites for this.

One more thing: if Siri starts to announce a message you can just tell it to stop rather than letting it drone on until the end.

Reply to messages

You can also ask Siri to reply to a message you have received.

Announce calls

You can have your AirPods announce incoming calls in Settings>Phone>Announce Calls and select headphones only.

Send an email

Ask Siri to send an email to a specific name and it will open a new message on your iPhone and populate this with dictated text.

Set a Reminder

AirPods can set reminders – just say, “Hey Siri, remind me to (do a task) at (name a time).” You could say, “Hey Siri, remind me to pick up the dry cleaning next Wednesday at 4p.m.,” for example.

Set an alarm

This is really useful if you just want to zone out on a journey – enable noise cancellation, ask Siri to set an alarm for whatever time you have available and sit back. Alarm times can be defined conversationally (“in an hour and a half”), or specifically, eg. 11p.m.

Diary management

Siri on AirPods can schedule meetings and other appointments in your Calendar. The assistant will also tell you what’s on your schedule, and will remove items from that schedule on request.

Ask questions and find services

You can ask specific questions, and request Siri to find specific services. In the case of services, Siri will search out the most popular result that is relevant to where you are situated, which means when you look for a plumber you should end up with one who is based nearby. Restaurant recommendations are provided by Yelp.

Control your home

If you use HomeKit, you’ll also be able to use Siri on your AirPods to set HomeKit scenes and control HomeKit devices in your home.

Make notes and lists

Want to make a note while on the move wearing AirPods? Just ask Siri to take a note, or even make a list. Lists are kept in your Reminders, while notes exist in Notes.

Quick calculation

Siri will handle calculations for you using natural language: “What is seven times nine?” or “What is 15% of 47?” Siri will also handle more complex formula and can convert measurements and currency.

Stock prices

“What is (company name)’s current stock price?”

Translation

Siri will translate between English, French, German, Mandarin, Spanish, and Italian. This means if you need to figure out how to say something in any supported language, you can ask Siri to help. For example: “How do you say, ‘Where is the train station?’ in Spanish.”

Help make a decision

Stuck between a rock and a hard place? Ask Siri to decide for you – just choose heads or tails and ask it to “Flip a coin” for a result.

Siri humor

You can ask Siri to tell you a joke, sing a song – or even how many calories exist in the pizza you are consuming.

Want more Siri commands? Here’s a collection of over 140 more..

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