When I updated my iPhone to iOS 18.1 public beta in September last year, I changed both system language and Siri language to English (United States) in order to use Apple Intelligence. In the past few months, I have also started logging my blood pressure by double-tapping the bottom edge of the screen to type to Siri.
iOS 18.4 added Apple Intelligence support for English (Singapore). After updating to the new iOS version this morning, I changed my system language and Siri language back to English (Singapore). When I tried to log my blood pressure by typing to Siri tonight, it didn’t work.
Siri directed me to this Apple Support article, which explains:
To access and log Health app data using Siri, you need:
- iPhone with iOS 17.2 or later, supported iPad models* with iPadOS 17.2 or later, or Apple Watch Series 9 or Apple Watch Ultra 2 with watchOS 10.2 or later
Siri language set to English (United States) or Mandarin Chinese (China mainland). To check your Siri language: Go to Settings > Siri & Search > Language. 1
I changed my Siri language back to English (United States) while keeping the system language as English (Singapore). Now I can type to Siri to log blood pressure by pressing the side button, but I can’t double-tap the bottom edge of the screen to activate it because, apparently, this is an Apple Intelligence feature which doesn’t work when system language and Siri language are different!
What the hell, Apple.
This experience highlighted to me, once again, the shitty mess that is Siri today. One of its features only works in two localised languages. Two. And it can’t tell you what month it is.
Also, why does Siri need a separate language setting from the system language? Who’s using Siri in a language different that is from their system language? Maybe this is related to how Siri is implemented at a technical level, but as a user, I don’t care, and I shouldn’t need to care. Apple has always been good at eliminating unhelpful complexity from what they present to users. In this instance, they failed.
- You may have noticed that this Apple support article, published six months after the first Apple Intelligence feature shipped to the public in iOS 18.1, asks you to “Go to Settings > Siri & Search”. There is no such item on my iPhone 15 Pro running iOS 18.4 because this item has been renamed to “Apple Intelligence & Siri” in Settings app. In fact, in the same support article, Apple directs users to turn on Siri’s access to Health app data by tapping “Siri or Apple Intelligence & Siri”. What does this say about the state of Siri? You can decide for yourself. ↩
An Inconvenient Thought 