How to use SIRI to record Audio or video

Are you irritated with trying to use SIRI to record your voice? Dumping ideas or dictating a response to an email become laborious if you have to pussy foot around SIRI’s transcription limitations.

Maybe you are like me where the ideas I come up with a so fleeting and “in the moment” that the discipline of dealing with SIRI just kills the opportunity. The discipline to organise, enunciate and repeat. And the agony of waiting to see if SIRI even heard you.

Ive discovered a workaround and here is how I’m doing it:

on iPhone:

“Hey Siri”“Dink”“Record”****iPhone starts recording video with audio****I talkI have to use the iPhone screen to stop recording but it works!

On Apple Watch

** Long Press crown to invoke SIRI*****“Dink”“Record”A red record button appears.I press it.It starts recording.A stop button appears for me to end the recording when I’m done.

If you try it now, it probably won’t work for you. So how does it work for me?

Well, I stumbled across something really simple, effective and easy to use… and I’ve never seen anybody else using it so I thought it ought to be shared in the off chance you share my frustration.

An often unused feature of SIRI is its ability to open an app with just the app name. So here is the trick… if you find an audio or video iOS or watch app that has the name “record”, the SIRI will open it and run it as if it was a generic SIRI instruction.

In the case of the iPhone App described above I used the app “Record” which has an auto record capability. This means that when you open it, it immediately starts recording video until you end the recording. This suits me because I often just use the Record app to capture ideas or email dictation for transcription to Evernote or email later.

In the case of the Apple Watch I’ve installed a watch app called Record that just records audio. Its saves locally and then back-up to your iPhone so it works great.

I have a PA so I share the recorded dictation with her and she takes over from there for me… but even if you are doing your own transcription it is so fantastic just being able to able to have a flow of consciousness without the technology getting in the way. As an inventor I am always coming up with flashes and intuitions that are lost if not immediately captured so this has been an essential tool for me. Hope you can use it too.

How to use SIRI to record Audio or video was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.