Voice Commands are a new part of the Accessibility features in iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. This new feature finally lets you customize Siri’s name, which will be helpful for iPad and iPhone users who have trouble saying “Hey Siri” clearly.
This new feature is primarily intended for users with a condition or disability that prevents them from speaking in a normal way. But you can also use it to personalize the voice assistant or when, for example, your iPhone responds to “Hey Siri” too often, perhaps because someone in the house has a name that sounds like “Siri.”
Change Siri’s name
If for whatever reason you can’t say “Hey Siri” or want to change the name of your voice assistant, you can do so starting with iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. You can do this in the Settings app.
You can change Siri’s name using the steps below. This is the trigger word that you can adjust to activate the assistant using speech. In other words, you change ‘Hey Siri’ to another voice command.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Select Accessibility ▸ Voice Commands
- Under the heading ‘Speech’ select the option ‘Configure voice commands’
- Tap the ‘Continue’ button
- In the list of tasks, scroll down to ‘Siri’ under the ‘System’ heading and select it.
- Now type a custom phrase, for example: ‘OK assistant’.
- After this, you need to teach iOS to recognize this phrase by saying it three times.
- When the new sentence has been recognized three times, a confirmation will appear on the screen. Your iPhone will now listen for ‘OK assistant’ and perform the ‘Siri’ task.
After completing the steps above, you can activate Siri by saying “OK Assistant.”
Please note that when setting up, do not select the ‘Siri request’ option, as this will only allow you to perform a Siri command and not just activate Siri.
Procedure to use Siri changed
When Siri’s name is changed, you should take into account that the operation changes. For example, after saying the command ‘OK Assistant’, you have to wait until the command is recognized and Siri is activated. After this, you can continue with the command.
So you can’t say “OK Assistant, turn off the lights in the kitchen” in one sentence. You have to allow for a pause after saying “OK Assistant”. If Siri is activated, you continue with “turn off the lights in the kitchen”.
Changing Siri’s name only works on the device you set it on. If you have multiple devices with Siri, you have to set it on each device.
Please note, if you use Siri by typing instead of speech, you will not be able to use the above option and will need to disable typing.
Not available in macOS Sequoia
The option to customize Siri’s name under macOS is unfortunately not (yet) available. In the voice commands section of accessibility features under macOS, only the option ‘Siri request’ is available. With this you can only directly execute a specific Siri command and not just activate Siri, so you are still dependent on Hey Siri for Mac