UPDATED 01:36 EDT / AUGUST 25 2015

NEWS

5 new ways to put Siri to work for you in iOS 9

When Apple announced iOS 9 at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, the company touted a more intelligent Siri capable of doing more than ever. With iOS 9 currently in its fifth beta release, we’ve been able to see Apple’s personal voice assistant for iPad and iPhone in action.

Using nothing but your voice, you can now use Siri to find photos based on where or when they were taken, ask Siri to remind you about things, get public transit directions, find friends or family, and more.

Below we take a look at the top five ways you can put Siri to work for you in iOS 9:

Easily find photos or videos by location or date taken

Instead of manually searching for photos or videos by date or location in the Photos app, you can simply ask Siri to show you photos or videos taken at a specific location or on a specific date, including the exact day, month or year.

Simply ask Siri “Show me videos I took at Tom’s school recital.” Or, “Show me photos from my trip to New York last month,” and Siri will show you the correct videos and photos. You can get even more specific and ask Siri “Show me photos I took on August 18, 2015,” and she’ll display all the photos taken on that day.

Instantly create contextual reminders in Safari, Notes and Mail

Apple also promised a contextually aware Siri, meaning she can now take into account what are you are doing on your iPhone at the time of your request.

If you are reading an article in Safari and can’t finish it right then, simply bring up Siri and ask her “Remind me about this” and she’ll create a Reminder for you to come back and finish it.

You can also be very specific by asking Siri to remind you about something at a specific time, say 4pm, or when you reach a specific location, say when you get to the office, home, etc.

You can use Siri to set contextual reminders in Safari, Notes and Mail and she’ll create them in the Reminders app where you can simply check them off once done.

Ask Siri for public transit directions

Although limited to select countries and cities right now, public transit directions and information are available in Apple Maps in iOS 9. The good news is, you can ask Siri to tell you which subway or bus to take to reach your destination and she’ll serve up the correct info right in the Maps app.

Fast calculations and conversions

In iOS 9, Siri no longer uses the third-party computational knowledge engine, WolframAlpha, to perform simple calculations and unit conversions. Instead, she handles this natively and delivers results a bit faster to boot. Give Siri’s new math prowess a try by asking her perform multiplication or ask her to convert a U.S. dollar amount to British pounds, or anything else you can think of.

Ask Siri to find your friends or family

Starting with iOS 9, Apple’s Find My Friends app comes pre-installed as a native app and, if you use the app to keep up with friends’ and family’s whereabouts, you can ask Siri to show you where someone is simply by asking “Where is (enter friends’ name here)?” Siri will show their location with a marker on a map.

By tapping the location marker, you’ll go to the Find My Friends app, from where you can contact the person or create a notification for when they reach a specific location.

You can try out these new Siri features by installing the latest iOS 9 public beta or when Apple releases iOS 9 to the general public following its iPhone 6s launch event on September 9.

Image credit: Kārlis Dambrāns via Flickr

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