How to Create Complex Home Automations with a Single Siri Command

Siri AI continues to blow minds. The promise Apple made with Apple Intelligence is finally taking shape on your devices. You can now build complex home automations, dig into your personal context, and ask questions about what is actively on your screen. We have been busy testing all these capabilities. Let's dive into what you can do right now.

Build home automations with your voice

Setting up smart home routines used to mean tapping through endless menus. Siri AI removes all that friction. You can now tell Siri exactly what you want to happen and it will configure the entire automation for you in the background.

Here's how to try it

1. Activate Siri on your device.
2. Say, "Create a home automation to lock all the doors at midnight."
3. Open the Home app and tap the Automations tab. Your new schedule will be sitting right there.

Pro tip: You can verify the actions inside the Home app to make sure Siri grabbed all the correct locks and accessories.

On-screen awareness changes everything

Siri now understands what you are looking at. If you scroll past a movie clip on a social media feed and do not recognize it, just ask Siri. It will identify the show and tell you exactly where to stream it. This also works perfectly for finding locations.

Give it a spin

1. Open a vague social media post mentioning a restaurant.
2. Activate Siri and say, "Get me directions to this restaurant."
3. Siri will read the context on your screen, identify the restaurant, and open Apple Maps with your route.

Plan trips and save recipes directly to Notes

Siri is great at pulling scattered information together. You can ask it to plan a week-long trip to Hawaii. It will recommend hotels, find highly rated restaurants, and check flights. You can then say, "Add all this information to an Apple note," and it generates a neatly organized document.

It also works wonders for saving recipes you find online, even if they are split across multiple screenshots.

How it works

1. Take a screenshot of the ingredients on a recipe post.
2. Scroll down and take a second screenshot of the instructions.
3. Open the Siri app and start a new conversation.
4. Tap the + icon, select your two screenshots, and type, "Take the ingredients and steps from these two screenshots and make an Apple Note with the recipe."

Once the note is created, you can follow up by saying, "Add these ingredients to my grocery list in Reminders." Siri will instantly populate your shopping list.

Dig into your personal context

This is where Siri AI truly shines. It connects the dots across your apps and history. You no longer need to remember exact dates or search terms to find your own memories.

You can simply ask, "What was that restaurant in Miami my family and I ate at back in March?" Siri will scan your context, identify the restaurant as Versailles, and pull up the photos you took that day.

You can keep the conversation going. Ask a follow-up like, "Did we see a movie there too?" Siri will search your files and surface the PDF tickets for Project Hail Mary in 70mm IMAX that you saved on that trip.

Explore the world with Visual Intelligence

You can now use your camera to ask questions about the physical world. If you want to know more about a landmark, translate a document, or buy a specific product, Visual Intelligence handles it.

Here's how to use it

1. Open the camera or click your camera control button.
2. Tap the Siri button at the bottom of the screen.
3. Snap a photo of a foreign menu.
4. Tap the Translate button that appears.

You can also point your camera at an object like the Anker Laptop Power Bank (25K, 165W). Siri will identify the exact model and provide a direct link to buy it on Amazon.

Manage your day seamlessly

Siri is now much better at managing your calendar and task lists. You can ask, "What do I have going on today?" and it will read out your scheduled events and active reminders.

If you need to adjust your day, just tell Siri. You can say, "Move the Primary Tech Daily reminder to 4:30 PM." You can also create complex calendar events using natural language.

Scheduling an event

1. Tell Siri, "Add lunch to my calendar Thursday at 12 PM with Dad at El Puerto Restaurant."
2. Siri will confirm the spelling and the specific restaurant location.
3. Confirm the prompt to drop it right onto your calendar.

A few more quick wins

Siri AI packs a lot of smaller quality-of-life updates that will save you time every day.

• Article summaries: When reading a long news piece, just ask Siri for a short summary of the article on your screen.
• Multi-stop directions: Tell Siri to get you directions to Walt Disney World Resort, but add a stop at Starbucks first.
• Find lost files: Say, "Find me that Cornfield Chase PDF I texted to Asher Robles," and Siri will dig it out of your message history.
• Fix your passwords: Open the Passwords app, go to Security, and tap Get Started under the compromised passwords alert. Your device will automatically upgrade your weak passwords in the background.

That's a wrap

Apple Intelligence is finally making Siri the digital assistant we always wanted. From locking your doors at night to remembering the name of a restaurant you visited months ago, the everyday utility is massive. Go trigger some home automations and test out Visual Intelligence. You will be surprised by how much it actually understands.