iOS 7.1: Control Siri Manually

Under the latest version of iOS 7, you can now control how long Siri listens to what you’re saying, which is an incredibly welcome change. Before 7.1, you’d briefly hold down on the Home button until you heard the beeps to bring Siri up…

…and then you’d start talking. The problem with this was that if you paused just slightly too long when you were speaking, Siri would assume that you were finished, leading to a lot of frustration with Apple’s voice assistant.

First of all, have no fear if you really enjoy invoking and using Siri like that—the old way still works, but we now have an additional ability. If you continue to hold the Home button down instead of releasing it after Siri comes up, your device will listen until the button’s released. This means that if you start to send a text message, for example, and need to pause in the middle to consider what you want to say, Siri won’t think you’re done and move on to the next step.

I’m pretty jazzed about this! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been trying to demonstrate Siri to someone only to be cut off in the middle of a sentence because I stopped talking for approximately a microsecond. I like new features that make me look like less of an incompetent boob, you know?