MacFormat UK – June 2019

The ‘Suggestions in Look Up’ item refers to rich results like

the websites shown above. By turning it off, you may then

see only Search Web and Manage Dictionaries commands.

52 | MACFORMAT | JUNE 2019 macformat.com @macformat

Tame Siri and Search

Find out how to personalise your device’s helpful nature

IT WILL TAKE

10 minutes

YOU WILL LEARN

Ways to use Siri &

Search to improve

your iPhone and

iPad experience

YOU’LL NEED

An iOS 12 device

With the introduction of iOS 12

came a bunch of improvements

and customisations for Siri &

Search that improve your

iPhone and iPad’s helpfulness.

After using iOS 12 for a while, it’ll suggest

actions on the Lock screen when you wake

your device. Those are the result of on-device

intelligence that learns about your usage – not

just of Apple’s own software, but third-party

apps too. If an app has been updated to work

with this, suggestions may be very specific,

such as ‘Show my recent contacts’ in Cardhop

or ‘Schedule for today’ in Fantastical.

Siri takes repetition, the time of day and

your location into account for its suggestions.

As well as the Lock screen, suggestions can

appear in iOS’s search results and in iOS’s

Look Up feature. You may want to stop info

from some apps leaking out onto the Lock

screen in particular, so we’ll show you how.

Make it more personal

It’s possible to assign personalised voice

commands to suggestions. If you’ve turned

on Type to Siri (see step 7) to avoid speaking

to your phone in public, typing those phrases

may seem like a lot of work. So, add iOS’s

Text Replacement feature into the mix.

By doing that, rather than type even short

commands like ‘Text the boss’, you can have

iOS replace stuff like ‘#txboss’ with ‘Text <your

boss’s full name>’. Boom! This requires some

extra thought to prepare, but it means you

can still perform complex actions with a few

key taps instead of jumping to and around

another app manually. Alan Stonebridge

Genius tip!

To avoid other people

getting up to mischief

with your device, think

about turning off Allow

Siri When Locked in

Settings > Siri & Search.

APPLE SKILLS iOS software