Did you know you can tell Siri about your relationships with the contacts stored on your iPhone and other Apple devices? Read on for how to make Siri smarter by assigning family (and many other) relationships, including made-up ones.

Sometimes using Siri for commands that involve contacts can be a hassle. Siri might not catch the last name or you might have multiple contacts with the same first name, slowing down the process.

Luckily you can tell Siri about any number of relationships for a better experience with the voice assistant on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and more. The functionality goes way beyond traditional relationships too, so you can create a Siri connection with a contact based on nicknames or any other goofy or weird association you’d like to make.

How to make Siri smarter with family relationships

  • Tell Siri about your relationship, for example ” ___________ is my dad”
  • Confirm to Siri the relationship with the contact
  • Now you can use words like “dad” and “father” for Siri commands like sending messages, making calls, and more.
  • Get creative, you can assign any word as a relationship to a contact like: “Tommy is my turtle,” “Tina is my wildflower,” “Mitch is my brobrocop.”

Here’s how the process looks:

If you’d like to undo a relationship, just say the same command you used to create it but replace “is my ________” with “is not my ___________.” Confirm to Siri your request to undo the relationship.

For more help getting the most out of your Apple devices, check out our How-to guide as well as the following articles:

  • How to remove iOS configuration profiles on iPhone or iPad
  • How to silence iPhone calls without sending directly to voicemail
  • How to restore default iPhone settings without erasing your data
  • Here’s what all the iPhone status bar icons mean
  • How to send iPhone calls directly to voicemail
  • How to stop Apple from potentially listening to your Siri recordings
  • How to set up Plex on a Synology NAS drive
  • How to change Siri’s language on iPhone
  • How to speed up the iPhone upgrade process in iOS 12.4 and higher
  • How to repeat song or album on iOS 13