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Apple Watch Ultra asking "which one" when I use Siri to message my wife.

jmpage2

jmpage2

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Sep 14, 2007
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Perhaps my use of an Apple Ultra watch on the latest OS is incidental but after setting up and starting to use my new Apple Watch Ultra I've observed that when I try to use Siri to send a message to my wife it asks me "which one" and shows her iCloud email handle AND her phone number, both of which are registered with iCloud.

Bizarrely it isn't doing it with other contacts that I've tried it with, just my wife, who of course I use it with the most.

This only happens with the Watch, which has cellular and WiFi connectivity.

Is anyone else seeing this? It's rather annoying.
 
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Siri on the watch is frustratingly dumb. I didn't think it could be worse than it is on the phone, but somehow it manages. I'll often use the phrase "Hey Siri, start an outdoor walk." If I do this with the watch directly, it will open the workout app and start the workout. The same happens if I use my phone directly or my Air Pods Pro connected to my phone. But if I use the Air Pods Pro connected to the watch, it will ask which app to use then list all of the apps on my watch that support recording a workout of any kind (in my case, Workout, Slopes, Strong and Liftin'), even though only Workout actually supports a workout named "Outdoor Walk". To make matters worse, Siri then doesn't even bother listening for my response.

Another example: I have homebridge setup to add my Nest thrmostat to HomeKit. The thermostat has several modes: Off, Heat, Cool, Auto. All summer long I have been using Siri on the watch to set the thermostat to off if I have a window open somewhere, then set it back to cool when I close it. I just say "Hey Siri, set the thermostat to cool," and it does it. Now that things are cooling off I do the same, but I want to set it to heat. So I'll say "Hey Siri, set the thermostat to heat," to which she will always respond "To what temperature?" So it understands setting the mode to cool and using whatever the programmed temperature the thermostat is set to use, but not for heat? WTF?! The worst part is, this worked perfectly last year with iOS 15 and watchOS 8. 😡🤬😡🤬
 
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I might be wrong but I believe it’s asking which contact, email or phone number, to use. When I message my wife I always say “text ….(my wife’s name). There may be a setting to default to one or the other or just say “iphone” or ”phone number” and it may learn which one you mean.
 
papbot said:
I might be wrong but I believe it’s asking which contact, email or phone number, to use. When I message my wife I always say “text ….(my wife’s name). There may be a setting to default to one or the other or just say “iphone” or ”phone number” and it may learn which one you mean.
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I don't think that's the issue, as I only have one contact for her, no other contacts with the same name, both of her contact methods are registered to the same iCloud account.

Additionally I don't see this behavior when I activate Siri from my iPhone 14.
 
parseckadet said:
Siri on the watch is frustratingly dumb. I didn't think it could be worse than it is on the phone, but somehow it manages. I'll often use the phrase "Hey Siri, start an outdoor walk." If I do this with the watch directly, it will open the workout app and start the workout. The same happens if I use my phone directly or my Air Pods Pro connected to my phone. But if I use the Air Pods Pro connected to the watch, it will ask which app to use then list all of the apps on my watch that support recording a workout of any kind (in my case, Workout, Slopes, Strong and Liftin'), even though only Workout actually supports a workout named "Outdoor Walk". To make matters worse, Siri then doesn't even bother listening for my response.

Another example: I have homebridge setup to add my Nest thrmostat to HomeKit. The thermostat has several modes: Off, Heat, Cool, Auto. All summer long I have been using Siri on the watch to set the thermostat to off if I have a window open somewhere, then set it back to cool when I close it. I just say "Hey Siri, set the thermostat to cool," and it does it. Now that things are cooling off I do the same, but I want to set it to heat. So I'll say "Hey Siri, set the thermostat to heat," to which she will always respond "To what temperature?" So it understands setting the mode to cool and using whatever the programmed temperature the thermostat is set to use, but not for heat? WTF?! The worst part is, this worked perfectly last year with iOS 15 and watchOS 8. 😡🤬😡🤬
Click to expand...

Okay, you might be on to something as far as things working differently on the watch.

I also am questioning if enabling the cellular functions on the watch are involved.

I had a lot of trouble getting AT&T to add the watch to my account, but it is working, however I've observed that when the watch is being used with Siri on Cellular it is kind of horrible, and in places where my phone would have service the watch complains it doesn't have a connection. Might cancel it. I activated it for when I'm out on mountain bike rides and leave my phone at home but so far it's nearly useless for that.
 
I think this is a bug. I have the same thing happening. I’ve been using the watch to text my wife for years.

Suddenly, I’m having to do an extra tap, and the Siri animated ball blocks the UI for the first choice.

Something is off in iOS 16. I think it might affect all people who are designated with a familial relationship. As it has been doing this when I’ve texted my mom from the watch as well.

I can’t understand how something like this would make it past all the betas and test patterns for the device usage.

I agree siri is bad on the watch, slow and lacks operational capability—like it can’t seem to move audio between HomePods directly, whereas HomePods can and so can iPhone.

My hope is that everyone is so focused on the headset that stuff like this is just getting low priority.

Just the same, these devices and their services are expensive and Apple should be working harder to avoid regressions and deliver consistent and more capable versions of their voice assistant.

My esteem for Siri as a product is so low, and it seems to have stagnated so much, I wonder if Apple will drop it completely, or at least deprecate “Siri” in favor of something new alongside the headset.

I’m using the Series 7 and iPhone 14 Pro. I just checked and am running iOS 16.0.2 and watchOS 9.0. I’ll upgrade to 16.0.3 and watchOS 9.02 and see if that fixes it.
 
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jmpage2 said:
Perhaps my use of an Apple Ultra watch on the latest OS is incidental but after setting up and starting to use my new Apple Watch Ultra I've observed that when I try to use Siri to send a message to my wife it asks me "which one" and shows her iCloud email handle AND her phone number, both of which are registered with iCloud.

Bizarrely it isn't doing it with other contacts that I've tried it with, just my wife, who of course I use it with the most.

This only happens with the Watch, which has cellular and WiFi connectivity.

Is anyone else seeing this? It's rather annoying.
Click to expand...
The Siri has gotten dumb with the ultra. I swear and I not no issues when I say hey siri text my mom or hey siri text….. the ultra has been kinda ****** with Siri command and speech to text. I hope it’s the software which can be fixed.
 
It's not the Ultra, my AW7 started doing this after some update (I am assuming) ... only for my wife as well, no other contacts. Something about wives :p.

But then it magically stopped doing that. I naively assumed after the hundredth time I selected the one I wanted it "learned", but it can't really be that adept I wouldn't imagine.
 
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I don't know if this has anything to do with it or if it is just a coincidence... For months I have been experiencing the "which one?" issue when using Siri to send messages to my daughter regardless of which device I'm sending from. She finally updated her phone to iOS 16 this morning and now Siri doesn't ask me which one anymore.
 
I’m glad I found this thread. I’ve been trying to send a text to my sister, and every time, Siri says which one. My sister has a mobile phone and email address registered with iCloud. If I read out the email address, she says which one again.

I’ve tried it with other contacts and it does it all the time. Fully updated iOS on iPad Pro.

Absolutely infuriating.
 
Please file feedback about this to Apple (I did). This happens to me on my Mac with one person and it's so annoying.

Hey Siri, call ____.
Which one?

Hey Siri, call ____ mobile.
Do you mean ____?
 
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jmpage2 said:
Perhaps my use of an Apple Ultra watch on the latest OS is incidental but after setting up and starting to use my new Apple Watch Ultra I've observed that when I try to use Siri to send a message to my wife it asks me "which one" and shows her iCloud email handle AND her phone number, both of which are registered with iCloud.

Bizarrely it isn't doing it with other contacts that I've tried it with, just my wife, who of course I use it with the most.

This only happens with the Watch, which has cellular and WiFi connectivity.

Is anyone else seeing this? It's rather annoying.
Click to expand...
Yes, same thing here. Sporadic. No idea why.
 
jmpage2 said:
Perhaps my use of an Apple Ultra watch on the latest OS is incidental but after setting up and starting to use my new Apple Watch Ultra I've observed that when I try to use Siri to send a message to my wife it asks me "which one" and shows her iCloud email handle AND her phone number, both of which are registered with iCloud.

Bizarrely it isn't doing it with other contacts that I've tried it with, just my wife, who of course I use it with the most.

This only happens with the Watch, which has cellular and WiFi connectivity.

Is anyone else seeing this? It's rather annoying.
Click to expand...

It’s trying to give you a hint my man!

😂
 
A year later, this still isn’t fixed. iOS 17 continues to ask “which one, home or mobile?” - even when a contact only has one number in my contact book. iMessage or not, green or blue bubble, doesn’t matter. The extra step is SO cumbersome and drives my continued hatred of Siri. Android does voice commands SO well.
 
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Neko1500 said:
A year later, this still isn’t fixed. iOS 17 continues to ask “which one, home or mobile?” - even when a contact only has one number in my contact book. iMessage or not, green or blue bubble, doesn’t matter. The extra step is SO cumbersome and drives my continued hatred of Siri. Android does voice commands SO well.
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It's so weird that you have the opposite problem I have. With me it's always with Siri on my Mac and never iOS.
 
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