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Comment by antipaul | Hacker News Reader

Works on Siri! You can even set – get this – multiple timers ;)

I seem to get about 90%; wife gets closer to 80%. I just want it to be better.

Activate Siri and then say the amount of time you'd like on the timer. For me, that's holding the side button then only saying, "20 minutes."

The one caveat is that once the timer you want is two and a half hours or longer, then Siri replies by asking what you would like to convert to.

That may be it - we’re always asking a HomePod to do it - “hey siri set timer for five minutes”

My Siri-initiated timers are always done with my phone, probably 50 or more each week (work stuff). The only time I get a failure is when I release the side button too quickly. I've made certain the spoken feedback is enabled to reduce the risk of me making that mistake. (Settings > Siri > Siri Responses > Prefer Spoken Responses)

As for, "What time is it?"... Try activating Siri and only saying, "Time."

I suspect that's the main difference; if you're trying to use hands-free voice activation via "hey Siri" you get a much different experience than if you can touch the watch/phone to trigger Siri first.

And thinking back over it, more than half the failures are complete - e.g., it likely never activated at all. Very few are "it set a timer, but for the wrong time".

Good chance that's what captures our different Siri experiences. The few times I've done it spoken was always with AirPods and I always waited for the Siri reply (been a while; is it, "Uh-huh"?) after I said, "Hey, Siri." But my experience activating Siri with speech is so minimal as to be untrustworthy of anything broader.

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