How To Get a Personal Update From Siri

One of the cool new features in iOS 14 is called Personal Update. Now, Siri can give you a daily briefing! This is a long awaited feature that the Amazon Echo has had for quite some time. Apple is playing catch up.

Personal Update

This feature was conceived to help you become more productive, but I use it to keep track of my day and it’s fun!  Siri’s exact response will vary, depending on what it thinks is relevant to you at that particuliar moment, and could change throughout the day. So, Siri will share the following updates:

• Current weather conditions
• To-do List from Reminders App
• Traffic for your daily commute 
• Calendar appointments
• Latest news

If some of those categories don’t apply Siri may eliminate them from your update and the update will be shorter. The News is an audio recording from NPR, CNN, or the BBC. 

Check Your Siri Settings

• Open Settings
• Scroll and Tap on Siri and Search
• Toggle on the following
  • “Hey Siri
  • Press Side Button for Siri (this is the power button)
  • Allow Siri when locked

You’ll also be able to change Siri’s voice, check out Siri Responses and chose whether or not you want Siri to announce your messages.

How To Request a Personal Update

Simply tell Siri you’d like to hear a snapshot of you day using these phrases.

Just say “Hey Siri, or push the side button to activate Siri and say the following:

• What’s my update
• Personal Update
• Daily briefing

Any of these should do the trick! Siri will start out with the weather forecast, then move on to appointments on your calendar, followed by your current travel time and traffic conditions to any of the places Siri knows you’re going today. The update concludes with a regional news update. It’s usually two to three minutes long and it can be disabled if you don’t find it useful. All you have to do to remove the news, is say: “Hey Siri remove news from my Personal Update. If you change your mind a little later just say: “Hey Siri add the news to my Personal Update.

Personal Update System Requirements

Supported on these devices and OS versions:

• iPhone or iPod Touch running iOS 14.2 or later
• iPad with iPadOS 14.2 or later
• HomePod or HomePod mini 14.2 or later

Identify Your Device Model And OS Version

• Tap on Settings
• Scroll and Tap on General
• Now Tap on About

You can check this on the iPhone and iPad. The first section shows, the Name of Your Device (which you can change by tapping on it), Software Version, Model Number, and Serial Number. These are all really important pieces of information and you should know how to access them.

Conclusion

Sad to say, there appears to be almost no way to personalize this feature. You can tell Siri to remove news and that’s about it. There are no settings anywhere to change news sources or add to or remove various parts of the briefing. 

This is a great first step for Apple and hopefully they will expand it soon.