Siri, Apple’s personal assistant that you can talk to (and that can talk back), can do lots of things. Set up appointments, get sports scores, find restaurants and more. One thing that I find Siri good for is playing music on my iPhone. When I’m out walking, listening to music with my Bluetooth headphones, I find it much easier to tell Siri what I want to listen to than to scroll through the Music app. Here’s an overview of the different ways you can have Siri play music.
- “Play [artist name]” This plays music by the artist you name in shuffle mode.
- “Play [album name]” will start playing an album in sequence.
- “Play [playlist name]” will start playing a playlist in sequence.
- “Play [song name]” will play the song you specify. If, however, you have an album and song with the same name, Siri will choose the album. For example, say “Play Wish You Were Here,” and Siri will play the album; say “Play the song Wish You Were Here” and you’ll hear the song.
- “Play [genre name]” Siri plays music from the genre you specify in shuffle mode.
- “Shuffle music” Siri will play all of your songs in shuffle mode.
- “Shuffle [playlist name]” will play the playlist you specify in shuffle mode.
- “Pause” tells Siri to stop playing. “Play” starts playback again. “Skip” tells Siri to skip the current track and go ahead to the next one.
- “Make a Genius playlist from this song” tells Siri to create a new Genius playlist. The current song will continue playing.
- “What’s playing?” Siri will show you (and tell you, if you have voice feedback turned on) the name of the song and artist currently playing.
iTunes Radio has a number of special Siri commands:
- Play a specific radio station: “Play Bob Dylan radio.” Sometimes, if you tell Siri to play music by an artist “Play Grateful Dead,” it will play a radio station instead, if you have a station with the same name.
- Favorite a song: “Play more like this.”
- Never play a song: “Never play this song.”
- Find out what’s playing: “What song is playing?”
- Play a new station: “Play a reggae iTunes Radio station.”
- Pause, stop, or skip songs: “Skip this song.”
- Add a song to your Wish List: “Add this song to my iTunes Wish List.”
This is not a complete list of Siri commands to play music. If you know of any that I haven’t listed, please post in the comments, and I’ll add them.