SIRI TRICKS

Your own private IMDb. You probably already know that you can use Siri to get information about what’s playing at movie theaters near you. But Siri’s also in expert in pretty much every motion picture ever made. That means you can ask questions about your favorite films, but you can also make Siri do more of the legwork for you when, say, you’re curious about which films specific actors have appeared in together. You might ask, “What movies star both Susan Sarandon and Tim Curry?” And Siri will, in turn, reply with both The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Rugrats In Paris.

Get movie reviews. Not sure if a given movie is worth your time? Just ask Siri: “Is Rugrats In Paris any good?” Siri replies with a review from Rotten Tomatoes.

Editing Siri. Sometimes Siri doesn’t understand you quite right. Maybe you told it to call your friend “Aaron” and it thought you said “Erin.” Fortunately, you can fix Siri’s mistake; after Siri reports that she doesn’t know what you’re talking about, scroll up and find the speech bubble where Siri records what it thinks you said. Then tap that bubble, and you’ll find that you can now edit what Siri heard and resubmit your request.

If you don’t want to bother typing out a long correction, you can also use iOS’s built-in dictation feature to enter your corrected text. Just tap the microphone in the keyboard and speak your text aloud. We’ll give you time to make your own Inception joke about using Siri to fix Siri.

Perhaps you are already an iOS master. Or maybe you consider yourself more of a novice. Either way, we feel confident that at least some of the tips and tricks for iOS 6 that we present below will be new to you. What’s more, we hope you love them—and benefit from them—as much as we do.

Your iPhone or iPad can read to you. Enabling the Speak option makes it possible for your iOS device to read aloud any selectable text. Launch the Settings app, tap on General, and then choose Accessibility. Scroll down to Speak Selection, and tap to turn it on.

Now, go into any app where you can highlight text. Your options include Mail, Safari, Notes, and many others. Select some text, and you’ll see a new option appear in the contextual menu (you may have to tap the right arrow to view more options). Tap theSpeak command, and your iOS device will start reading the text aloud.