What to do if Siri stops responding to your requests? Siri responds well to them when the button is pressed, but even if the iPhone is a couple of centimeters away from you, the phrase “Hey Siri” is ignored. Rebooting the device doesn’t help. The acquaintance who had this happened was furious. He cannot live without Siri, and suddenly such a misfortune. What assumptions did not come to his mind – it was not possible to correct the situation. But, as it often happens, the reason for the “Siri malfunction” turned out to be primitive, and to fix it, it was not required to reinstall iOS or contact the service center.
Siri not responding? It can be fixed
As it turned out, neither the developers of the voice assistant Apple, nor iOS 15, nor even Apple and Tim Cook were involved in Siri’s strike. And there was no strike. Siri did exactly what it was supposed to do after enabling one not-too-frequently-used Sound Recognition feature in iOS Settings. Which the victim turned on himself, a few months ago. Just out of curiosity. Naturally, the warning that turning on this function will turn off “Hey Siri”, he saw.
If it was an iPhone that a friend uses all the time, the story would have ended before it began. But he turned on “Sound Recognition” on another iPhone, which usually tries beta versions of new iOS. And didn’t use it until recently. Then a big trouble happened with his main iPhone, he was in a service center, he had to use an unloved iPhone. And on it “Siri went crazy”.
IOS accessibility
If Siri isn’t responding, there’s a working way to make it work
Calling Accessibility a “one-stop source of problems” is not a good thing, but lately, I’ve been hearing more and more about troubles due to an enabled and forgotten feature in this section of Settings. The elimination of the problem boiled down to several steps:
- Open the “Accessibility” section in the iOS Settings;
- Find in this section the subsection “Sound Recognition”, it is at the bottom of the list;
- Make sure Sound Recognition is turned on (just in case, there could be some other reason for problems with Siri);
- Just turn off this mode.
Siri’s unfriendliness vanished. It would be great if all problems were solved so easily. Just in case something strange happens to your iPhone, it makes sense to browse through the subsections in Accessibility. Especially if someone other than you has both access to your device and a bad habit of looking into it. But don’t believe those who claim that Apple invented Universal Access out of greed.
To make money selling iPhone to people with disabilities. I’m not even sure that developing such functions will pay off at all. And this is a huge amount of work that requires deep knowledge in various fields. At best, these features generate little revenue for Apple. All this is done out of noble and selfless motives. By the way, it was even easier to heal Siri. After enabling this feature in Accessibility, you can also manage it from the iOS Control Center.
Recognizing iPhone sounds
The feature appeared in iOS 14, and is intended primarily for the hearing impaired and deaf. In iOS 14, the function recognized 13 sounds – alarms, door lock, flowing water, dog barking, baby crying and others. This feature makes the iPhone an incredibly valuable device for those with hearing impairments. In some cases, this feature can even save lives. In iOS 15, the function was taught to distinguish two more sounds – the sounds of broken glass and boiling water. Now there are 15 of them. In reviews, the addition of two new sounds was met with criticism, noting that these sounds should have been supported from the beginning.
Sound recognition function appeared a year ago
In fact, the developers were praised. The function confidently and almost accurately recognizes the declared sounds and sends a notification. At the same time, the function can recognize any number of the declared sounds, even all at once. And if the sound does not fade for a long time, the user will receive them over and over again. Repeated notifications and the interval between them are also adjustable. iPhone cannot listen for room sounds and the user’s voice at the same time. Therefore, when the sound recognition mode is turned on, Siri’s response to her invitation to dialogue with the phrase “Hey Siri” is disabled.
When the mode is turned on, a few warning messages about this are displayed on the screen. And not only. The mode is strongly not recommended to be used for recognizing sounds in situations where a recognition error can lead to serious consequences. Severe injury or worse. Although, according to researchers, who tested this mode in all conditions they could think of, on the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 Pro it was very rarely wrong. For those with hearing problems, the lack of response to “Hey Siri” is not critical. The function can be useful even for those who have good hearing. With headphones, we all become “hearing impaired” unless it’s advanced wireless headphones. And this function will allow you to “hear” what is happening around us without interrupting entertainment or work.
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