This started with Twitter user Paul Alvarado asking @AppleSupport why Siri could not do something basic and useful like turn on the flashlight.
@AppleSupport Why can’t I ask Siri to turn my iPhone flashlight on or off? Seriously, it’s inexplicably inane limitations like this that make me deeply despise Siri.
cc @tim_cook @pschiller @cue
As you can see, Paul cc’ed Tim, Phil, and Eddy.
When I read this, I recognized the usefulness of the request. Asking Siri to turn on the flashlight would be an incredibly useful feature, especially when you are on your hands and knees trying to look under the couch for the only battery in the house that of course rolled under there.
So here’s the kicker, Phil Schiller’s response to the tweet:
https://twitter.com/pschiller/status/1032095824170250240
Yup. In iOS 12, Siri can turn on the flashlight. If you’ve got the beta, try it for yourself. And props to Paul Alvarado for asking the question and for his appreciative response to Phil.
This is maddening. On iPhoneX, the one way I’ve been able to turn the flashlight ON, was to go back to Lock screen and from there push the button to turn it on… or off. This should have been done long before…
Nope, that’s not the only way. You can access the flashlight in control center.
Great new feature! Love it! 🙂
More importantly, when will Siri be able to do simple functions like this without an internet connection??
“Hey Siri, turn the flashlight on.”
“Hey Siri, turn the flashlight off.”
(Beat.)
“Hey Siri, wave the flashlight like you just don’t care.”
Okay, the last request may have been unreasonable.
I love that hard push for flashlight, though. I don’t know when they added it because this is my first iPhone with 3D Touch, but it’s my favourite feature on my iPhone X.
Probably years! It translates voice to commands on the server, after all. There’s a whole cloud devoted to doing that. It’ll be a while before they can bake that into an iPhone.
Actually, I think you can do stuff like this IF you turn Siri off. The phone reverts to Voice Control in this situation, and processes commands on-board…
You will lose other functionality, however.
Good to see that it’s been localised, “turn on the torch” works great in Australia. Now, if Apple can just get Siri to understand local music charts so I can say “play hits from the 80s” instead of having to say “play songs from the 80s”.
“trying to look under the couch for the only battery in the house that of course rolled under there.”
It should be noted that if your phone rolls under the couch you should probably look into foundation repair.
https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/The_Half-Assed_Approach_to_Foundation_Repair
So does anybody who has iOS 12 beta know if the flashlight can be controlled by Siri on the iPad too? I hope it is not just iPhone only.
Yes, which it can do because Voice Control is so much more limited. Rather than looking for hundreds of things, it’s looking for just a few things. It only handles “call ${contact_name}[on ${number type}]” and a handful of audio-related commands, right?
This is increasingly my largest complaint about Siri. Especially with CarPlay, where I have some spotty coverage in my daily drive. And considering the advances being done in AI/ML, I don’t see why there isn’t already a “attempt local, fallback to cloud” type of action where very basic commands are processed locally. Like I get that composing a whole text message might need the power of the cloud, but “Call John” really shouldn’t.