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Siri in iOS 15 – Apple quietly cuts its functionality

When iOS 15 is released to customers later this year, Siri won’t be quite as capable as it used to be. That’s because Apple has quietly announced that it will pare back on supported interactions, affecting not just Apple’s own apps but third-party apps too.

According to a support page for app developers, Apple has confirmed that SiriKit will stop supporting a series of “intent domains” in a move that will affect both new and existing apps.

It means that asking Siri for help with certain things will result in a reply that it “can’t support the request” – even though these things currently work just fine in iOS 14.

We know what you’re wondering. What exactly is being axed here? CarPlay, for a start – you’ll no longer be able to ask Siri to adjust the radio, climate control, seats, profiles, and more.

Some functionality to do with lists, notes, and payments is gone too. Asking to transfer money or create a task list, for example, are on the chopping block.

You can no longer search through VoIP call history, and ride-booking requests for services like Uber and Lyft are no more. Siri is also unlearning how to search for photos and start photo playback.

This all begs the question of why Apple decided to limit Siri’s abilities like this. The voice assistant is often criticized for being less capable than alternatives from Google and Amazon, and it wasn’t too long ago Apple was promising to “open up” Siri to third-party developers. A step backward won’t help.

Sadly, Apple is staying mysterious on this one. Whether these types of interactions were rare enough to prune, or it has other plans for Siri integrations in the future, we don’t know.

But it does seem odd for Apple to hamstring itself in this department so soon after promising a more intelligent Siri at WWDC in June – especially when developers are already annoyed that they can’t access enough core iOS features to compete with the stock apps. It certainly doesn’t feel like a great move in the midst of the current anti-trust arguments against Apple. But maybe they have their reasons?

Either way, this is your warning to do one last Siri photo search for the road before the capability is stripped away this Fall.

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