Hands-On Tech 201

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Hands-On Tech. Let's take a look at troubleshooting activations of our virtual assistants. Stay tuned. Hello and welcome to Hands-On Tech This, of course, is the show where I take your tech questions. I, being Micah Sargent, take your tech questions and do my best to answer them. This week, our question comes in from Mark. Mark has kind of a. It's a long response, but this is good because it's got lots of information that we need. So Mark writes in to say:

We are an all Apple family. I abandoned Windows devices when I retired. Anyway, historically, if my iPad and iPhone were both on the desk or counter near me and I would ask Siri for something, it would always default to the iPhone. I'm not sure which update really caused it, but now you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes both devices will answer a question or perform a task two timers, for example or it will go to the iPad rather than the phone. Is there a way to get it to default to the phone.

Around the same time this started happening? Siri would also take a long time to, shall we say, release control back to the phone. This is especially true, though not exclusively true, when using Siri on CarPlay. Let's say I'm listening to Hands-on Tech in the car and I ask Siri to set a reminder or read a text message. After setting the reminder, it can be 20 to 30 seconds before the podcast resumes. Historically, it was nearly immediately after fulfilling the request. Is there a setting I can fix for how long Siri stays attentive with the little bubble displayed on the screen? How long Siri stays attentive with the little bubble displayed on the screen? Lastly, it recently seems way more sensitive than before to words that sound like Siri, and we'll wake up and say uh-huh. The TV seems to be causing it way more these days as well. And then Mark lists the devices that Mark is using, including an iPhone 14 Pro Max running 18.3, iPad Air 4th generation, also running 18.3, and a 2018 VW Atlas with plug-in CarPlay.

So first and foremost, mark, I want to let you know you're not alone. This is something that people have experienced ever since Apple started kind of adding more devices that are capable of hearing these activations and kind of acting on whatever it is you're asking, and unfortunately, there's no simple way to go about making changes or adjustments that will help with what is happening here. Changes or adjustments that will help with what is happening here. There's no setting, like you will find, for some virtual assistants, where you can say I want you to be more or less sensitive to the wake word that I have or wake phrase that I have, and because of that it means that you do get those activations that take place. But there are some things that you can do. One thing that I recommend is making sure that if you are in a home and well, you're in a home, but I mean if you are in a home with devices and you have other people who have devices in that home, make sure that they're all part of the Apple Home, like that you've invited them using the Home app, because the Home app is what is in charge of controlling HomePods, and it sounds like HomePods are some of the devices in your home that are responsible for these activations.

Now, I can't this next thing. I'm not certain that this is the case, I can't say for sure, but I do kind of wonder if it's possible that just maybe making sure that your Apple family is all part of your family is also put in place, that you have invited them as family members to your Apple family account, that there's a possibility that what that does is it kind of broadens the behind the scenes intelligence of the voice activation for these different devices and says, okay, now I know that you know Mark's iPhone and Mark's significant other's iPhone are both in the same space, and when Mark is, you know, trying to get attention for Siri, that I can, kind of I don't need to treat these devices as two separate things that only one of them needs to respond, right. So that's one possibility that you might try. Another thing I recommend is, as you've added more devices and as you have continued to upgrade over time, it's likely that you, when you set up a new device, are kind of going past the Siri page. You are kind of going next, next, next, next, and you're using your original Siri training data to determine whether or not you are communicating with the virtual assistant. And so I recommend that and this is a little bit of a process, yes, but on each of your devices, going in and turning off listen for hey, s-i-r-i and then turning it back on, because what that will do is it makes the training session need to be done again, and so there's a potential that, over time, that training data has become corrupted, or there's a chance that, because your space has changed in some way or another, that the audio is different in the space, that there are reasons why these devices might end up getting those false activations.

Lastly, you talk about the device kind of releasing control back to you after you have put out a message. This, unfortunately, is something that is reported widely as an issue and therefore what we can say about it is it's likely a bug. When this bug will be fixed and addressed is a guess for both of us. Unfortunately, that is always the case. We don't know when Apple will address these things. But, yeah, the fact that you are communicating in the vehicle and the vehicle well, you know, carplay within the vehicle seems to be listening for even longer. That and not switching back over. Yeah, that's annoying, that's obnoxious and that is a problem.

I have a recommendation when it comes to that, something that's been helpful for me. I would imagine that your vehicle, like mine, has a button on the steering wheel that you can press to trigger your virtual assistant. If you press the button, it brings up Siri and Siri listens while you're in the CarPlay session and Siri listens and you talk to it and then it waits to see if you're going to say anything else and then that takes a long time right. What I recommend doing is pressing and holding the button, because what you are doing is you're saying, as long as I'm pressing and holding the button, I am saying the request that I have, and when I let go of the button, I am done with my request. You don't need to keep listening, and for me that has caused CarPlay to switch over a lot quicker to running the command that I've asked it to do and getting back to what I was doing. So I would recommend trying that. So, basically, press and hold to talk to Siri, let go after you're done.

And the last thing I would suggest is look into your vehicle's manufacturer and see if there are any updates, firmware updates, whatever it happens to be to the system, because it could be that there's an audio profile that is responsible for that switch between those two modes of listening and getting back to actual play of whatever it is that you're listening to. So that can be. There could be a lot of things that are responsible for each of these issues that you've talked about. So you kind of have to go down the list of troubleshooting. So, again, retraining Siri by kind of starting fresh by going into your settings. You go settings, you go Apple, intelligence and Siri. You go talk and type to Siri this is on the latest version of iOS and you turn off the setting where it's showing the different phrases that you can use to try to summon Siri. Basically, turn that off, wait a bit, turn it back on and it will completely redo your training session. So that will hopefully help fix the issue there whenever it comes to trying to get it to listen to you when you want it to and not listen to you when you don't want it to.

All right, you also have a little PS for me, a little postscript, and I do want to answer this one because I think we've got your solution and it's pretty easy. You say PS, if you have time for this. One support tells me there is no way to lock down a full size on-screen keyboard to prevent it from getting the floating or split keyboard accidentally. My 95 year old mom can't ever get the full size keyboard back and we have to wait for a visit to do the two finger swipe thing to fix it. Is there any workaround? I don't know what that support person was telling you and what they meant or what was going on.

But I'm pretty sure that, yes, you can lock it down. It's my understanding that this is how it works. So we will go into the Settings app, we will go to General, we will scroll down to keyboard and we simply need to scroll down to the section that says split keyboard and turn that off. And now, when I'm using the on-screen keyboard, that keyboard cannot turn into a split keyboard and we're fine. So, yeah, I don't know, maybe the support person misunderstood you or maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but that is how you keep it from going into that weird floating split keyboard situation that is on like the left and right side of the screen or, even worse, the one that just is on one side of the screen, which is like the one handed keyboard option. So that is a very simple thing to do and I hope that helps. Be sure to write back in, mark, because I do want to hear about that.

And yeah, now I will briefly remind all of you out there that you should check out Club Twit at twit.tv/clubtwit. Joining the club is a great, great benefit, because for just $7 a month you get to ditch the ads. Plus, you gain access to some pretty cool benefits. You can also, for a limited time, join our club for free Two weeks free of Club Twit to try it out, see what it's like and get in on the fun. After that two weeks again, $7 a month. You will get the ad-free versions of all of our shows. You will get access to the Twit+ bonus feed and access to the members-only Discord server. So please consider joining the club, helping support what we do here, and thank you for your support. All righty, that brings us to the end of this episode of Hands-On Tech. If you have tech questions for me, hot@twit.v is how you get in touch with me and I look forward to answering your question. I'll catch you again next week for another episode, but until then, it's time to say goodbye.