Siri, stop disappearing in the middle of helping me
July 1, 2018 7:58 PM Subscribe
I got a car on Friday with Apple Car Play and I noticed this when I rented a similar car a few weeks ago. When I want to ask Siri to do something like send a text or find me directions to a local business I have to try several times and sometimes it just doesn’t work. For instance,
Here is a very typical flow:
I will say “Hey Siri” and Siri will come on but then disappear immediately, whether or not I include the thing I want to do.
The second or third time Siri will actually get to the part where it says “I’m listening” and then I can say for example, “Starbucks near me”. Siri may or may not turn off at this point.
If it hasn’t already turned off, it may come back with some nearby locations. Even if I say “Directions” as fast as I can it might still turn off at this point.
I might, might get to the part where I actually get to the directions.
This same thing also happens when I want to dial the phone or send a text. These are the only things I use Siri for. And I only need this functionality while driving. If Siri actually worked I’d find this incredibly useful but it’s just super frustrating. This can’t be the experience everyone is having can it?
I have an iPhone 5s that is I think two years old. Is it just too old to do this?
I saw the troubleshooting article that said to turn off spotlight search which I did.
Here is a very typical flow:
I will say “Hey Siri” and Siri will come on but then disappear immediately, whether or not I include the thing I want to do.
The second or third time Siri will actually get to the part where it says “I’m listening” and then I can say for example, “Starbucks near me”. Siri may or may not turn off at this point.
If it hasn’t already turned off, it may come back with some nearby locations. Even if I say “Directions” as fast as I can it might still turn off at this point.
I might, might get to the part where I actually get to the directions.
This same thing also happens when I want to dial the phone or send a text. These are the only things I use Siri for. And I only need this functionality while driving. If Siri actually worked I’d find this incredibly useful but it’s just super frustrating. This can’t be the experience everyone is having can it?
I have an iPhone 5s that is I think two years old. Is it just too old to do this?
I saw the troubleshooting article that said to turn off spotlight search which I did.
My iPhone 6 exhibits all these same systems with carplay and Siri - and some times it works just fine. I always connect by USB. So I was just chiming in to say that a slightly newer iphone had the same symptoms - I'll be watching this thread!
posted by Tandem Affinity at 8:26 PM on July 1, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Tandem Affinity at 8:26 PM on July 1, 2018 [1 favorite]
Personally, I have found CarPlay to be basically useless. The only thing I've found that I can't do with the phone simply connected via bluetooth (specifically turning off carplay on the car radio and the phone) is having the baseball scores display on the car's screen when using the MLB app. I've had no issues having it play music, read and compose texts via voice, and other things with just BT.
It's only slightly awkward to do this because, at least in my car, there's a button for giving voice commands to the car, and to enact Siri you have to hold it down longer and wait until the double beep, and this can take a few seconds but other than that it has worked flawlessly for me.
I have two vehicles (new Chevys) that this applies to, and have used both an iPhone7 and now an iPhoneX with equal results. It might also be relevant what model/year car you have. I will say that I had an older truck with a newer non-factory radio that had CarPlay. Without the BT connection to the car and no controlling voice commands from the steering wheel, it was lackluster at best. I could occasionally get it to read me text messages, but it was indeed flaky. If you have similar voice control in your particular vehicle (can you give voice navigation commands to your car's NAV system, for instance?), I'd recommend trying to go this route.
posted by SquidLips at 9:09 PM on July 1, 2018 [1 favorite]
It's only slightly awkward to do this because, at least in my car, there's a button for giving voice commands to the car, and to enact Siri you have to hold it down longer and wait until the double beep, and this can take a few seconds but other than that it has worked flawlessly for me.
I have two vehicles (new Chevys) that this applies to, and have used both an iPhone7 and now an iPhoneX with equal results. It might also be relevant what model/year car you have. I will say that I had an older truck with a newer non-factory radio that had CarPlay. Without the BT connection to the car and no controlling voice commands from the steering wheel, it was lackluster at best. I could occasionally get it to read me text messages, but it was indeed flaky. If you have similar voice control in your particular vehicle (can you give voice navigation commands to your car's NAV system, for instance?), I'd recommend trying to go this route.
posted by SquidLips at 9:09 PM on July 1, 2018 [1 favorite]
Hey Siri is only available on the 5s while it is plugged in to power. It is always available on the iPhone 6s and later. That said, you can always trigger Siri from the home button, and on my CarPlay enabled car, from a button on the steering wheel.
Hey Siri is designed to work when you make one fluid statement. For example, “hey Siri, search for Starbucks locations.” You’ll get your best results that way. However, sometimes it won’t hear you (particularly in the car if there’s road noise/audio playing). It is also based on your data connection, so if you have a poor signal,
posted by bluloo at 10:27 PM on July 1, 2018
Hey Siri is designed to work when you make one fluid statement. For example, “hey Siri, search for Starbucks locations.” You’ll get your best results that way. However, sometimes it won’t hear you (particularly in the car if there’s road noise/audio playing). It is also based on your data connection, so if you have a poor signal,
posted by bluloo at 10:27 PM on July 1, 2018
I use Siri in my car all the time, always plugged in to USB, and I almost always trigger it by using the speech command button on my steering wheel. I have found it to be extremely reliable. I would say it works flawlessly 95% of the time. (I'm using an iPhone 8.)
However, when it doesn't work the symptoms are similar to yours. It will either give me the "listening" screen on my car's built in screen endlessly, or abruptly kill that screen.
It seems the most frequent cause is a temporarily bad cellular signal. On a few occasions I've had to reboot my iPhone in order to get it to work, but this happens with non CarPlay related connections issues as well.
posted by The Deej at 10:47 AM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
However, when it doesn't work the symptoms are similar to yours. It will either give me the "listening" screen on my car's built in screen endlessly, or abruptly kill that screen.
It seems the most frequent cause is a temporarily bad cellular signal. On a few occasions I've had to reboot my iPhone in order to get it to work, but this happens with non CarPlay related connections issues as well.
posted by The Deej at 10:47 AM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: I tried disabling CarPlay and Siri seems to be having an easier time. CarPlay was pretty useless anyway. The generic music display is fine and I prefer google maps.
posted by bleep at 10:55 PM on July 11, 2018
posted by bleep at 10:55 PM on July 11, 2018
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