Roger Fingas
Several prominent apps have gained Siri Shortcuts compatibility this week, and more prominent names are coming between March and April.
The recent additions include American Airlines, Dexcom, Caviar, Merriam-Webster, and Spectre. Upgrades are forthcoming from Airbnb, Drop, ReSound, and Smarter. Of those Airbnb is likely likely to be the most significant, for instance letting people bring up their Airbnb directions, check-in time, and Wi-Fi password with a single Siri command.
Siri Shortcuts were introduced alongside iOS 12 in September, but are still relatively uncommon. Some of the first apps to come onboard were Tile, Pandora, Overcast, and PCalc.
The feature appears to be Apple's response to the flexibility of rival voice assistants Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Alexa in particular relies on a "skill" system with almost countless third-party options.
Malcolm Owen
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
William Gallagher
1 Comment
Well, I’m happy to see more apps getting Siri Shortcuts support. Unfortunately for me, I don’t use any of these apps. The one I was happiest to see was the Alarm.com app which I now use Siri with every day, multiple times. A recent update to the Hue app also mentioned Siri Shortcuts support, but so far I have been unable to find how to enable it and don’t fully understand how it helps, considering Hue already supports Siri commands.
I hope this is just the beginning of a trend and we see more apps supporting Siri Shortcuts soon. I’d like to see it added to Control4 and Integra but neither seems interested in updating their apps very often.