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Inconsistent Hey Siri Activation on 2018 MacBook Pro

Hooshka

Hooshka

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 18, 2014
26
14
Berkeley, CA
I have a 2018 15" Macbook Pro. Hey Siri only seems to work about 1 out of 10 times. I tried "retraining" and that didn't improve things. If I activate Siri manually, 'she' hears every word I say perfectly, so it's not the mic level or room background noise.

Anyway, just wondering what others experience has been.
 
Works well on my 13'' so far.
But i have it disabled on every other Apple device. Not sure it that makes a difference.
 
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Hooshka said:
I have a 2018 15" Macbook Pro. Hey Siri only seems to work about 1 out of 10 times. I tried "retraining" and that didn't improve things. If I activate Siri manually, 'she' hears every word I say perfectly, so it's not the mic level or room background noise.

Anyway, just wondering what others experience has been.
Click to expand...

Possible accent? Siri has worked pretty well for me. I am still waiting on Apple’s promises for this much improved Siri. Siri has very behind it’s competition
 
DeanLubaki said:
Same. My Mac doesn't react to Hey Siri. How did you retrain it?
Click to expand...

Go to Settings and then disable Ask Siri, then re-enable it and re-check listen for "Hey Siri". It will then go through the training again.
[doublepost=1532408457][/doublepost]I seem to have found what's associated with the issue. When Hey Siri doesn't work, activating Siri manually doesn't work either. It resets a moment later and then starts working again (sometimes it takes a few more seconds) either with Hey Siri or manually. When Hey Siri doesn't work, you can see that the volume icon in the task bar blinks (indicating it detected Hey Siri), but Siri won't trigger. Basically it seems that (at least for me) that Siri randomly resets and most frequently resets after using it. Seems like a software issue that will hopefully be resolved in Mojave.
 
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To be honest i haven't really found a good use for Siri anyway. Doesn't help that you still have to use sentences in a certain way for siri to understand what you want.

Had to look up how to get Siri to open up a certain folder yesterday. She just kept looking up things in the internet.
Then i finally told her to open up Dropbox the right way and it worked.

1h later i tried the same thing again. She understood what i said, but didn't do anything. She just disappeared, everytime.
Then i told her to open a different folder (Downloads) and that worked. Not sure why suddenly Dropbox stopped working.

But at least Hey Siri seems to work 95% of the time for me. Even though i don't know what to use it for :p
 
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I turned off Siri, on my Mac. The problem I face, is I can have my my HomePod, phone, iPad and now mac with me and I do think apple messed up, there's too many devices listening for the exact same catch phrase.
 
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maflynn said:
I turned off Siri, on my Mac. The problem I face, is I can have my my HomePod, phone, iPad and now mac with me and I do think apple messed up, there's too many devices listening for the exact same catch phrase.
Click to expand...

^This

They should allow us to change the phrase like Alexa does. Maybe Hey Mac, Hey iPhone, Hey iPad, etc.
 
M.Rizk said:
They should allow us to change the phrase like Alexa does. Maybe Hey Mac, Hey iPhone, Hey iPad, etc.
Click to expand...
That would be the simpliest solution.

Hey HomePod play this, Hey Mac, do this, etc etc.
 
maflynn said:
That would be the simpliest solution.

Hey HomePod play this, Hey Mac, do this, etc etc.
Click to expand...

At this point I have given apple too much money for a simple solution. They could use the handoff mechanisms to basically sync the response among the devices. What is super frustrating right now is when you say hey Siri open my documents and the iPad responds with a web search. Maybe instead it could make sure that command isn't valid on one of my devices in bluetooth range before falling back to a web search. Any way that they fix it is fine with me, but being told a thing that I want to do isn't supported because the wrong device answered isn't acceptable. I am certain that the folks designing and testing this had more than one apple product, so this really is a problem that should have been known and fixed.
 
Hooshka said:
Go to Settings and then disable Ask Siri, then re-enable it and re-check listen for "Hey Siri". It will then go through the training again.
[doublepost=1532408457][/doublepost]I seem to have found what's associated with the issue. When Hey Siri doesn't work, activating Siri manually doesn't work either. It resets a moment later and then starts working again (sometimes it takes a few more seconds) either with Hey Siri or manually. When Hey Siri doesn't work, you can see that the volume icon in the task bar blinks (indicating it detected Hey Siri), but Siri won't trigger. Basically it seems that (at least for me) that Siri randomly resets and most frequently resets after using it. Seems like a software issue that will hopefully be resolved in Mojave.
Click to expand...

I tried that already and it doesn't show the set up prompt
 
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