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[] VOICE CONTROL YOUR MAC WITH SIRI[ MAC ]Voice control your Mac with Siri
GIVE COMMANDS TO AND ASK QUESTIONS OF APPLE’S VOICE-CONTROLLED ASSISTANT, SIRI.
[ TECHLIFE TEAM ]YOU MAY BE familiar with Siri if you own an
iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. You can ask the
personal assistant to look up information,
create a new reminder or calendar event, send
a message and much more using just your
voice. Siri makes it easy to get many common
tasks done without having to move the pointer
around the screen, click things or type details
in a window.
There are several ways to initiate a
conversation with Siri. Even if you aren’t much
of a fan of keyboard shortcuts, we strongly
recommend you try to memorise Siri’s. If your
hands spend a lot of time on the keyboard,
you can call on Siri in an instant, check the
information it provides, then press Esc to
dismiss its window and return to whatever
you were doing.
You can also use Siri to search for files based
on simple criteria, without having to type
criteria in Spotlight or a Finder search window
to find items you worked on within a range of
dates or which have a certain tag attached.
There’s one thing that’s useful to keep in the
back of your mind. If Siri should slightlymisinterpret you, there’s no need to repeat
yourself. Instead, double-click the mistaken
word at the top of its window, correct it with
the keyboard, then press Return to rerun
your command. Now, let’s get started.01
SET SOME BASIC EXPECTATIONS
In System Preferences, click Siri’s icon. The first two items here
determine the language and dialect Siri expects you to speak in,
and the voice (language, accent and gender) in which Siri responds. Your choice
in the former of these dictates the options that are available for the latter.02
PICK A MICROPHONE
Many Macs have a mic built in, but perhaps you use a USB one or a
headset for services such as FaceTime, Skype and Messenger. With it
connected, click the Mic Input pop-up menu; when set to auto, macOS analyses
your usage to work out which to use, but you can explicitly pick one here.[STEP BY STEP]
USE SIRI AND TAILOR IT TO YOUR PREFERENCES