Siri gives you the ability to interact with Things by speaking. Here are some examples to get you started.
Speaking to Siri AI (Beta)
Apple introduced the new Siri AI with OS 27, and it’s currently still in Beta. Whether you have access depends on your country, device, and language. Please check Apple’s website for eligibility. To use it, enable it in Settings.
If you are not eligible, you can keep using the regular Siri.
The new Siri AI is much better at understanding your requests, which means you can talk as you naturally would when creating new to-dos. For example:
Siri will create a to-do named “Buy beach towel” with a reminder set to “Thursday, 3pm”.
A few tips
Apple’s Siri AI works better with some phrases than others.
- At least in your first few conversations, always specify that a reminder should go to Things, or it might end up in Reminders.
- Siri only knows about a single date per to-do, namely its start date. This means you can easily schedule to-dos and set up alarms, but you can’t set deadlines.
- Siri doesn’t know about Things’ date-based lists like “Today” or “Upcoming”, so you can’t tell it to “move” something there. Instead, tell it to “schedule” items for specific dates.
- When talking about your areas, it's best to refer to them as “lists”, like “my Work list”.
If you’re hitting problems while talking to Siri, please check our troubleshooting page.
Speaking to regular Siri
If your device does not support Siri AI, you can keep on speaking to Siri as you’ve done before. All the features we’ve supported so far will keep on working.
Here are a few examples of what you can say to Siri:
- “In Things, remind me to buy milk.”
- “In Things, remind me to buy milk tomorrow at 10 AM.”
- “In Things, add buy milk to my Shopping list.”
- “Show my Today list in Things.”
A Few Tips
Apple’s Siri requires a specific syntax. Here’s what seems to work best with Things:
- Say “task” instead of “to-do”.
- Say “list” instead of “project”, “area”, or “tag”.
- You don’t need to say the full name of a list. It’s fine to say “Vacation” instead of “Vacation in Rome”.
- Don't forget to begin or end with “in Things” or “with Things”. Otherwise Siri will hand over your task to Reminders app.
Use Siri to run a shortcut
You can also use Siri together with Apple’s Shortcuts app. A “shortcut” is simply a sequence of actions that can be performed automatically, and with Siri you can trigger that shortcut by speaking a memorable phrase. For example “Siri, add a grocery item” could be set up to add a to-do to a shopping list in Things.
To learn more about Apple Shortcuts, check out our gallery where you can download some sample shortcuts to see what sort of things are possible.
Troubleshooting
Having trouble getting Siri and Things to work together? Before reaching out to support, please check all troubleshooting steps on this page.