Siri is an 📝Apple product that interprets spoken and typed natural-language requests and carries them out across the company's devices — setting timers and reminders, sending messages, controlling smart-home accessories, answering factual questions, and triggering actions inside third-party apps.
Siri began outside Apple: it spun out of SRI International's DARPA-funded CALO research and was founded as an independent startup in 2007 by Dag Kittlaus, 📝Adam Cheyer, and Tom Gruber, shipping as an iOS app in February 2010. Apple acquired the company two months later for a reported $200 million and relaunched Siri as a built-in feature of the iPhone 4S in October 2011, making it the first voice assistant most consumers ever used. It was subsequently outpaced on capability by 📝Alexa and then by chat-based assistants, and Apple has been rebuilding it around 📝Apple Intelligence — unveiling an overhauled version backed by Google's 📝Gemini at WWDC in June 2026, with a beta to follow later that year.
Siri ships at no cost on every current Apple device — iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, HomePod, AirPods, and CarPlay — and supports requests in more than twenty languages, with the newer Apple Intelligence capabilities gated to recent silicon.
Key Features
- Natural-language requests — Parses spoken or typed instructions and resolves them into device actions, so one sentence sets an alarm, drafts a message, or starts a playlist.
- On-device processing — Routine requests are handled locally on Apple silicon, so dictation and device control keep working without a network round-trip or cloud audio upload.
- App Intents and SiriKit — Third-party developers expose their own actions to the assistant, letting Siri operate inside apps Apple does not own rather than only its own software.
- Cross-device arbitration — Running on iPhone, Mac, Watch, HomePod, AirPods, and CarPlay, it resolves which nearby device should answer a given wake-phrase request.
Getting Started
- Open Settings on an iPhone or iPad and go to Apple Intelligence & Siri.
- Enable the wake phrase so the assistant listens for "Siri" or "Hey Siri".
- Complete the voice setup prompts so it learns to recognize your voice.
- Hold the side button — or say the wake phrase — then speak your request.
- Turn on Type to Siri when speaking a request aloud is not practical.