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Hey Siri - spotty?

M

MasterRyu2011

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 22, 2014
1,064
359
Hey guys,

I've noticed that my watch doesn't always respond to Hey Siri the first time. 50% of the time, Hey Siri gets me nothing. As far as I know, I can't train the watch to detect my voice better, is there? Also, it doesn't seem like the Watch responds to "Hey Siri" at all if the watch face is not turned on, essentially when I raise my watch to my face. Does anybody have a similar experience with activating Siri?

Thank you.
 
MasterRyu2011 said:
Hey guys,

I've noticed that my watch doesn't always respond to Hey Siri the first time. 50% of the time, Hey Siri gets me nothing. As far as I know, I can't train the watch to detect my voice better, is there? Also, it doesn't seem like the Watch responds to "Hey Siri" at all if the watch face is not turned on, essentially when I raise my watch to my face. Does anybody have a similar experience with activating Siri?

Thank you.
Click to expand...
You are correct in that Hey Siri only works when the watch face is on. My experience has been that it works at least half the time. Hoping for improvements here in the future.
 
Spotty is generous. If the watchface is active, I would say it activates 90% of the time. That's when the problems start. Sometimes it doesn't respond to the voice. Sometimes it does, but doesn't understand. Sometimes it begins the dictation and then hangs. Sometimes the screen freezes. Sometimes when you push send it doesn't respond. Sometimes when you push send it goes to confirmation screen and hangs. I would say that it works accurately and reliably about 25% of the time. It's kind of in a "don't bother" state IMO.
 
ya...... siri's a lot lazy on the watch..... i hope she gets on the ball with the next update!
 
"Hey Siri" works for me maybe 25% of the time. I assume that its voice recognition is considerably simpler than that used on the iPhone/iPad - as we know they both require the device be plugged in, so it clearly requires a lot of power. (Understandably of course - speech to text is tricky.) Additionally, the S1 just has less available processing power for that sort of thing.

I'm from England and my accent is fairly... English, I wonder if that's the problem - many people on here have had no trouble at all.
 
Now that I bend my wrist downwards, away from the microphone and talk into the left side of the watch, rather than the right, Siri comes on way more often.

BUT


When I say "Hey Siri", and then she actually responds, and I start talking, 50% of the times the bloody microphone button appears and now I have to press that and then repeat what I said. WTF?
 
Mine was a little like that at first, but it seems to have learned my voice a lot better since I got it. One annoying thing it sometimes does is start searching after I've only gotten out a couple of words.
 
Yeah, I've experienced this as well. Most times, the watch won't respond when I say "Hey Siri" after I've lifted my watch and the screen has turned on. I'll have to repeat myself a couple times, and then the screen ends up turning off, so I have to lower and raise my watch again for the screen to turn on again and for me to repeat "Hey Siri" again.

When the watch does respond, it usually responds moments later, and I can tell because the watch will vibrate with feedback, although I do notice a considerable lag.

And often, even if I feel the feedback and make a request, the watch will not hear me properly, and the little microphone icon will appear, which means I have to click on that and repeat myself, which makes the hands-free useless.

I hate that you have to keep your arm up as well, since making a request and lowering your arm can turn off the screen and cancel the request you made.

I also hate when I use Siri for dictation, and the last part of my sentence won't show up on the display, and I usually think that the watch did not hear what I said, so I repeat the last part of the sentence, and then I end up with the last part of the sentence being displayed twice. It's so annoying.

I was really hoping for the watch to be a good companion for hands-free use while driving, and I was hoping for a safe solution to using it over an iPhone, although I've found that it is even MORE dangerous to use while operating a vehicle than the iPhone ever was.
 
I haven't noticed this yet on mine, but Siri seems to be an idiot. Only twice have I been able to get her to start playing music and both times it was the wrong song. The two times I got it to work I had to say on my iPhone play the song xxxx. Every other time she just responds their was a problem.
 
karinatwork said:
Now that I bend my wrist downwards, away from the microphone and talk into the left side of the watch, rather than the right, Siri comes on way more often.

BUT


When I say "Hey Siri", and then she actually responds, and I start talking, 50% of the times the bloody microphone button appears and now I have to press that and then repeat what I said. WTF?
Click to expand...

Say your command in one long sentence along with Hey Siri. For example, "Hey Siri set timer for 10 minutes." Don't wait for the screen to switch before you continue. Whenever I do that, the watch will stop listening and the microphone screen will come up. Siri works at least 90% of the time for me. Same thing for my brother and my sister with their watches. I would never disable Hey Siri since it's easily the most useful feature of the watch.
 
Mine works for me pretty well because I do the same as Fiestaman. I talk to it like I'm having a conversation with a person and get my command out all at once as if I assume it's heard me and is listening.

I speak clearly and enunciate but I don't speak slowly or in an exaggerated careful manner or it tends to get the words wrong. The more normally I speak, the more accurately it seems to register my words and commands. When I'm tired and impatient or anxious about getting my words right, I have problems. It all goes better when I'm relaxed and able to forget I'm speaking into a watch.

I've got tmj and tinnitus that result in muffled hearing, so I have cultivated a higher clearer speech than a lot of people I know, just because I struggle so hard to make out other people's speech, especially with deeper voices and tones. People often don't seem to realize how often they mumble or trail off when they speak, and the effects seem magnified with a deeper voice. I wonder if this is a factor in some Siri failures.
 
I use Siri all the time on my iPhone, and I swear using Siri on the watch makes me so angry. I also hate that when Siri decides to make an appearance she will wait forever to finish the last part of your dictation, making me think she's messed it up and now my screen is black and I have to start over.

There's no keyboard so imo, Siri needs to work flawlessly. Honestly, this is the one thing I dislike about my watch. :mad:
 
I had the same issue with Siri not always responding on first try. I realized that the watch face activates quicker than Siri.
So when you raise wrist to activate screen, pause a second then say "hey Siri". It now works 100% of the time for me.
 
I wish that while dictating something to Siri, you could swipe across the screen with your finger to delete a word or something. While dictating a text, I often see that Siri has misheard a word, and it's frustrating to have to start over instead of being able to delete the last word and continue with your command.
 
GrumpyMom said:
Mine works for me pretty well because I do the same as Fiestaman. I talk to it like I'm having a conversation with a person and get my command out all at once as if I assume it's heard me and is listening.

I speak clearly and enunciate but I don't speak slowly or in an exaggerated careful manner or it tends to get the words wrong. The more normally I speak, the more accurately it seems to register my words and commands. When I'm tired and impatient or anxious about getting my words right, I have problems. It all goes better when I'm relaxed and able to forget I'm speaking into a watch.

I've got tmj and tinnitus that result in muffled hearing, so I have cultivated a higher clearer speech than a lot of people I know, just because I struggle so hard to make out other people's speech, especially with deeper voices and tones. People often don't seem to realize how often they mumble or trail off when they speak, and the effects seem magnified with a deeper voice. I wonder if this is a factor in some Siri failures.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's that, at least for me. I've done a comparison test with my iPhone(connected to a charger) and the Watch by trying to turn on the voice assistant at the same time. "Hey Siri" activates Siri on my iPhone 100% of the time (even with it being 5 feet away), but only about occasionally on the watch.
 
I would say for me it works 50 percent of the time. Hopefully next update apple will fix this.
 
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