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Siri hacks, mods, and tricks

Since the iPhone 4S launch, hackers have been trying to figure out how to make Siri do more than Apple has designed it to do. Now it's being ported to other Apple devices, and enterprising iPhone 4S owners are using it to control their lights, theromstats, and even their cars. We'll be keeping track of the most ingenious hacks we can find right here.

  • Nathan Ingraham

    Jan 12, 2014

    Nathan Ingraham

    Scarlett Johansson questions Siri's loyalty after 'Her' diss

    Scarlett Johannson Sodastream
    Scarlett Johannson Sodastream

    The war of words between Siri and Scarlett Johansson is heating up. Last week, Buzzfeed discovered that if if you ask Siri if she is her (a reference to the Siri-like artificial intelligence in the Spike Jonze film Her), she'll respond with a rather snarky dismissal of Johansson's work. Vanity Fair was conducting an interview with the actress and happened to bring up Siri's diss, and Johansson played along. "I feel like I've been betrayed," she joked. "The other day I asked Siri how I looked and she said, 'You're the fairest of them all.' So she's obviously playing both sides. What the hell? What a backstabber, man."

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  • Bryan Bishop

    Jan 5, 2014

    Bryan Bishop

    Siri's a little jealous of Scarlett Johansson in 'Her'

    Siri snarky about Samantha from Her
    Siri snarky about Samantha from Her

    Siri used to deliver some rather opinionated takes on sci-fi movies, and while those have largely been left behind it turns out the digital assistant has some strong feelings when it comes to Spike Jonze's recent film Her. The movie tells the story of a man who falls in love with an operating system named Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), but as BuzzFeed first noticed, asking Siri if she is Samantha results in a terse "no. You know that it's just a movie right?" Different phrasings result in Siri taking shots at how Her "gives artificial intelligence a bad name" and how she "doesn't spend much time with fictional characters." We were quite fond of Her when we reviewed it last year, and it will be opening wide on January 10th — but in the meantime, it's pretty clear how Siri feels.

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  • Sam Byford

    Feb 15, 2012

    Sam Byford

    Japanese language support next in line for Siri?

    siri, japanese
    siri, japanese

    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 well-suited to natural language processing in many ways, with its fairly regular grammar and limited phonology, but the high level of homophony and comparatively sparse codebase to date would make a successful Siri implementation unprecedented in the country. Apple is now the number one smartphone maker in Japan, securing 27.1 percent of the market last year, meaning a lot of people will be waiting for this update.

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  • Aaron Souppouris

    Jan 26, 2012

    Aaron Souppouris

    Siri voice translation comes to the iPhone 4S via Lingual

    Lingual Siri Tweak
    Lingual Siri Tweak

    The tweak is one of the first third-party extensions to take advantage of the AssistantExtensions platform for Siri development. AssistantExtensions, as well as adding extra functionality to Siri, allows anyone with even basic programming knowledge to extend Siri's capabilities. If you're interested in developing for the platform, its website provides an easy-to-follow tutorial to get you started. The developer has already shown off in-line tweeting, YouTube search, and "Chat box," an advanced chat AI that extends Siri's ability to converse and provide information. It's early days yet, but we're looking forward to seeing what comes from this promising new platform. Both of the free tweaks can be found by searching for "Lingual" in the Cydia store.

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  • Aaron Souppouris

    Jan 24, 2012

    Aaron Souppouris

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

    SiriToggles
    SiriToggles

    We'd like to see the developer add some error-correction to expand on Siri's voice-recognition capabilities, perhaps looking for phrases similar to those that trigger actions. Even so, the tweak has only been around for a few days now, and is currently on version 0.0.2, so we expect to see more functionality and refinement added in time. For now, the developer Hamza Sood has set a goal of multiple language support for the next update. SiriToggles is available for the iPhone 4S only as a free download from the Cydia Store.

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  • Jamie Keene

    Dec 23, 2011

    Jamie Keene

    Air Dictate turns Siri into your Mac personal secretary

    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 do similar things before now, Siri has been recognized as being far more accurate and adaptable to different speech styles than other voice recognition engines. Air Dictate costs $0.99 and you can grab it from here.

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  • Nathan Ingraham

    Dec 5, 2011

    Nathan Ingraham

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

    iPhone 4S on sale
    iPhone 4S on sale

    While the installation process may be uncomplicated, H1Siri isn't working flawlessly yet. A number of users are reporting consistent errors when accessing Siri, and installing this app apparently can break camera functionality (though fixes are out there for those who need them). There's also the potential for errors when installing the custom repositories in Cydia necessary to install this app, thanks to high amounts of traffic hitting the various servers hosting the files. Due to these issues, H1Siri currently feels like a fun hack for the curious, but not something users should count on as a reliable tool.

    Update: It sounds like there might be more reasons to stay away from H1Siri than just instability. Developer Grant Paul, who was one of two people behind a port of Siri to the iPhone 4 and iPod touch in late October, believes that H1Siri is using a proxy server, and that any information that goes through Siri is being transmitted to a potentially insecure third party — this could inclue SMS messages, calendar entries, contacts, and even location data. Paul's planning to release more info on his concerns with H1Siri soon.

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  • Nathan Ingraham

    Nov 29, 2011

    Nathan Ingraham

    The latest SiriProxy hack controls an entire room

    SiriProxy room control
    SiriProxy room control

    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 ever closer to the day when we can just tell our phones to do whatever we want.

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  • Eddie Fu

    Nov 28, 2011

    Eddie Fu

    Siri0us brings Siri dictation to jailbroken iOS 5 devices

    Siri0us
    Siri0us

    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 4iPhone 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 server-based Siri AI, which aids Siri voice recognition to some extent. By all accounts, it appears that this hack works pretty well within the search and Note apps, but we don't expect it to be around for long, unless developer Eric Day somehow gets permission to use Nuance's API.  Try out Siri0us while it's still available by downloading it through Cydia, and check out a video of it in action below.

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  • Jamie Keene

    Nov 27, 2011

    Jamie Keene

    Siri hacks control your car and media center

    We covered the Siri proxy hack last week, which allows developers to catch custom phrases and act on them, expanding the functionality of Apple's voice-controlled personal assistant. We'd anticipated this work being employed by other developers, and a few exciting uses for the hack have already started to appear.

    First up, Brandon Fiquett has written code that allows him to start, stop, open the trunk, and activate the alarm in his Acura using the kind of voice controls we've come to expect from Siri. The hack works alongside his Viper car automation and security system, with Siri communicating with his proxy server, which forwards commands on to the cellular-connected car.

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  • Jamie Keene

    Nov 21, 2011

    Jamie Keene

    Siri proxy hack adds custom commands including Wi-Fi thermostat control

    Once the folks at Applidium had cracked the Siri protocol, it was only a matter of time before the first mods, exploits and hacks started to leak out. Because Siri relies on Apple's servers to deliver results, the limitations on what it can and can't do are entirely controlled at the server end. However, with the way Siri communicates with the data center now fully understood, a developer called Plamoni has managed to create his own custom handlers, using a proxy to catch terms and act upon them accordingly.

    Using this method, Plamoni can now control his Wi-Fi thermostat via Siri, with natural speech parsed as you'd expect, and Siri responding as if it was connected directly to Apple. More commands are being added daily, with a Twitter module already included. Best of all, this doesn't require a Jailbroken device, just the installation of a fake root certificate onto the phone. The proxy software is available on GitHub along with instructions, though for now the developer warns that it's not for the faint-hearted, and whether it'll play nice with your Nest is another matter entirely.

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  • Dieter Bohn

    Nov 15, 2011

    Dieter Bohn

    Siri protocol cracked, new tools could bring it to other platforms

    siri down
    siri down

    The details of the crack involved determining exactly which protocols Siri uses to comunicate with Apple's servers as well as how Siri encodes audio — in this case, the open source Speex codec. As of this writing, nobody has used the tools to port Siri to other devices, but we imagine it's only a matter of time. It's also likely to only be a matter of time before Apple finds a way to block this method, if only by blacklisting UDIDs that are taking advantage of it.

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  • Nathan Ingraham

    Nov 10, 2011

    Nathan Ingraham

    Siri hack allows you to access system settings and apps with your voice

    main siri
    main siri

    Siri may not be able to do everything for you yet, but iPhone users are finding creative ways to expand its capabilities. It turns out there's a fairly simple way to add shortcuts to different apps and system preferences to your contact list, which is of course accessible by Siri. All you need to do is create a contact and name it after the preference or app you want to access, and then paste a little bit of javascript into the URL field of your new contact. You can then ask Siri to bring up that contact, and tap the URL in the contact info to launch the app or system preference. 

    If that sounds clunky — it is. We've spent a little time playing around with it, and while it technically works, it doesn't save time over the standard methods, and you still need to tap the screen to actually launch the desired item. It's a cute trick, but we're hoping Apple allows for some true extensibility in Siri versions to come.

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