The Verge - Siri hacks, mods, and tricks

Japanese language support next in line for Siri?

2012-02-15T04:56:53Z

It looks like Japanese could be the next language to work with Siri, if the voice recognition software itself is to be believed. Try it for yourself — ask her what languages she speaks, and you'll get the answer shown above. So far Siri has only been able to understand French, German, and various dialects of English, but Apple's FAQ page has stated for a while that Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Italian, and Spanish are on the way. While Apple is able to make changes to the backend of Siri any time, adding the ability to select a new language from the settings menu would likely require a software update, and we have a few ideas as to when one of those could be coming.

Adding support for Japanese would be a non-trivial task. The language is...

The Flaming Lips 'Now I Understand' featuring Apple's Siri on vocals

2012-01-30T06:07:04Z

Wayne Coyne and his group The Flaming Lips this weekend are previewing a "sound construction" piece that features not only Erykah Badu and "Biz Markie backwards" (we're struggling to hear it, too) but also Apple's own Siri personal assistant, found most days on an iPhone 4S helping people hide bodies. The loose narrative begins with Siri not understanding the moon, the stars, and the sun... but with the power of Erykah Badu's singing, and her pointing out stars and sun, Siri learns to understand. Not the deepest narrative, no, but more importantly it's an atmospheric and experimental lullaby available for one week only before Coyne and Co. take it offline. Enjoy:

[Thanks, Dave P]

Siri voice translation comes to the iPhone 4S via Lingual

2012-01-26T13:07:03Z

Another day, another Siri hack. Lingual is a new jailbreak-only tweak for the iPhone 4S that extends Siri's functionality to voice translation. Created by the CodeThemed team, Lingual allows translation from English to over 30 languages. The developers have said that they're hoping to include translation to English in a future update. We installed the tweak and can report that it works flawlessly, quickly pulling in results using Microsoft's Bing Translate API as a backend. Its only limitation is that backend, which isn't as strong as Google's offering, and regularly fails to correctly translate phrases. That said, the developers of Lingual can't be held accountable for Bing's shortcomings, and they've done commendable work in such a...

SiriToggles brings voice-activated app launching and settings toggles to your jailbroken iPhone 4S

2012-01-24T11:41:51Z

Since the Absinthe jailbreak tool was launched last Friday, developers have released a pair of tweaks for the newly exploited iPhone 4S, specifically targeting its exclusive Siri feature. While VoiceUtils provides some base functionality, our favorite is SiriToggles, which allowed us to launch applications, toggle a few system settings, and check how much battery we have remaining.

There's no front-end to SiriToggles, it works within the boundaries of Apple's existing UX, activated by a long-press on the home button. A simple "launch Netflix" command will launch the relevant app, but SiriToggles also responds to non-linear commands, for example, you can ask "Siri, please set the brightness to 50%," or "turn off my Wi-Fi," and Siri will...

Air Dictate turns Siri into your Mac personal secretary

2011-12-23T16:10:02Z

A new app from developer Avatron has found a way to use a Siri-enabled iPhone to dictate to Macs on your network using your voice. For now it's limited to text input — there's no voice control of other applications just yet — but considering there's no public API for Siri, this is still impressive. The iPhone app requires you to install a software receiver onto the Macs you wish to use, which then broadcast their availability around your Wi-Fi network. Once you've selected your Mac and used it to open up an app like TextEdit or Microsoft Word, you can speak your magnum opus, it'll be run through Apple's servers, and then pasted into the waiting desktop application.

Although other apps like Nuance's Dragon Microphone have been able to...

H1Siri hack for iPhone 4 and iPod touch on Cydia: use at your own risk (update)

2011-12-05T18:48:04Z

Hackers have been attempting to port Siri onto hardware besides the iPhone 4S ever since it launched, and now jailbroken iPhone 4 or iPod touch users can get in on the fun. A Chinese hacker group known as CD-Team released the H1Siri application to Cydia (the main app source for jailbroken iOS devices) and now dozens of users have taken to YouTube showing Apple's digital assistant running on their unsupported hardware. You need to run iOS 5 or higher and have a jailbroken iPhone 4 or 4th generation iPod touch to get Siri working, but installing is a fairly straightforward process if your device meets these requirements.

While the installation process may be uncomplicated, H1Siri isn't working flawlessly yet. A number of users are...

The latest SiriProxy hack controls an entire room

2011-11-29T22:07:05Z

Thanks to SiriProxy, iPhone 4S users have been figuring out ways to start cars, queue up Plex, and adjust the thermostat just by telling their phone to do it for them. Now we're seeing video of an even bigger home automation hack, with a hacker known as phildman14 closing his curtains, turning on his overhead fan, and dimming several lights just by asking Siri for assistance. phildman14 noted on YouTube that it's based on an iPhone app he wrote that lets him perform the same controls, but now he's been able to hook Siri in to do everything by voice. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like phildman14 has posted the code he's used for this hack, but it seems pretty heavily customized for his particular setup anyway. Still, we're getting...

Siri0us brings Siri dictation to jailbroken iOS 5 devices

2011-11-28T19:49:02Z

We've seen an unreleased Siri hack that purportedly works on the iPhone 4, and now there's a jailbreak package cheekily dubbed Siri0us that uses a workaround to bring Siri dictation to jailbroken iOS 5 devices (it's been confirmed to work on the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod Touch). Like Siri, the hack is powered by Nuance's voice recognition technology and is able to replace the keyboard within apps, but there are important differences. Since phones other than the 4S can't communicate with Apple's Siri servers, Siri0us appears to use Nuance's API (without permission) to connect to the servers that the speech recognition company hosts for apps such as Dragon Go instead. This workaround means that the hack is unable to use the...