Sitting in front of your Mac and ordering Siri to, “Call Dad” or “Call Rahul” (Rahul, your boss, not that random ‘naam to suna hi hoga‘ fellow you met five years ago) should work like magic, right? In your dream world, it will! But in the real world, Siri will do a double take, questioning, “Who’s Dad?” or “Which Rahul did you mean?” I mean, our long list of confusing Mac contacts can be quite confusing – even for Siri.
Worse case scenario, the AI might just mistake “my dad” for another name in your contacts and start dialing making you wonder why you didn’t skip the fancy voice commands and simply tap your way to your phone favorites, all while you are having an awkward conversation with the guy you didn’t mean to call.
Lucky for you, with a little work on your part, you can teach Siri all the nicknames and relationships in your life, from your (not so) loving significant other
And once Siri knows who your dad is, or that “Call Rahul” means your boss, not Rahul whatshisname, using voice commands for calls will feel a lot more magical. So, here’s how you can introduce Siri to your family members and relationships!
Create a Contact Relationship Using Siri
- Wake up Siri on your Mac, from your Menu Bar or Dock
- Educate Siri about who the Contact is and what is your relationship with them in a single sentence. Kind of like “Geetanjali is my mother”
- After taking a moment, Siri will ask you to confirm the relationship by asking, “OK, do you want me to remember Geetanjali as your mother?” Obviously, say ‘Yes’ or tap on the ‘yes‘ button
- Done and Done!
But, know that while keeping Siri updated with your family titles and relationship business, they will only work for unique names and titles. So if you have two sisters, you obviously can’t have similar titles for both of them. So, address them differently to clear things up for Siri. For instance, I named my younger sister as the “Lesser Evil” and elder sister as the “Evil Kween”
Manually Add Relationship Data With the Mac Contacts App
- Launch the Mac Contacts app from your Dock or Applications folder.
- Click on your contact card and go to the Edit button in the bottom-right of your card.
- Then Click the + button, linger over ‘More Fields‘ (but don’t get too attached) and then click ‘Related Name.’
- Type away the name of your Contact.
- Next, click on the ‘relation field‘ next to your Contact’s name. It may already come with a relation tag like “parent” or “sibling” by default.
- Pick the relationship you want the Contact to have between you and your Contact.
- If predefined relationship labels aren’t your thing, tap on the Custom button on the relationship list for a custom label.
- Type your customized label, click OK and then click ‘Done’.
That’s it, fellas! This is how you make a mundane day-to-day conversation a bit more personalized and less confusing. And FYI, Imma judge you ‘bohot hard‘ if you use this how-to guide to change your SO’s name to ‘Honey Boo Boo’ and your other ‘Honey Boo Boo.’ JK! Not really!
