How to access Siri on the Mac

Apple has introduced its latest release of its operating system for the Mac called macOS X 10.12 Sierra. Apple has added its snarky digital assistant to this release of the operating system, and there are some easy ways to access Siri while on the Mac. We will discuss three of these here.

From the Dock

By default, Siri is an icon in your dock, so you can navigate to the dock and activate Siri. This method works, but it takes you out of your task to work with Siri.

From the Menu Extras

By default, Siri will appear in the menu extras area of your Mac. You can navigate to Siri near Notification Center and activate it there. You will still have to leave your current task to use Siri in this way.

Siri from the keyboard

Yes you did read this correctly, you can use Siri for the Mac by pressing a keystroke on the keyboard. A keystroke is where you use multiple keys to accomplish a task. Activating Siri from the keyboard is off by default, so here is how to enable this feature and set a keystroke.

  1. Open System Preferences
  2. Navigate to Siri in System Preferences
  3. Find the option of Keyboard shortcut and select the option you like

Please note that the first option in the list is Command + Space which is used for Spotlight. I personally use Fn (Function) + Space because the function key is also used for dictation.

Conclusion

Using Siri on the Mac with the keyboard is one of the best ways to use Siri. Once you are done with Siri, you are returned to the window you were last using if you press escape to exit the Siri window. I commonly ask Siri questions while playing Minecraft, and this process does not interrupt my gameplay in the slightest.

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