How to make Siri wait longer to respond in iOS 16 on iPhone

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Siri is Apple’s default voice assistant. But it’s not the best voice assistant by a wide margin, and it has several drawbacks. Among many, Siri doesn’t have to wait long for users to finish speaking and come up with answers, which frustrates users.

Although there is a solution to this problem, Apple has developed a solution with iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 for iPhone and iPad respectively. The Siri pause time can be manually extended and set to a waiting period of your choice. In this article, I have explained two ways to make Siri wait longer.

Press and hold the Home/Power button longer

You can activate Siri through voice commands or by pressing and holding the Home/Power button on iPhones. Please note that iPhone users with a home button will not be able to use Siri with the power button.

Although this may not be the easiest method, it works. Our problem, where Siri starts working on results before you finish your sentence, can be solved this way.
All you have to do is hold down the Home/Power button and don’t let go until you’re done with your entire command or query.

Siri activated by pressing and holding home or power button

The next time you want to ask Siri something and have the luxury of holding your device, you can follow these steps. However, if you’re on iOS 16 and hate using a physical button to activate “Voice Assistant,” skip to the next section.

Set Siri to wait longer in iOS 16 and iPadOS 16

Enabling a hands-free experience is the primary goal of voice assistants. And whenever you want to interact with a voice assistant, in our case Siri, it doesn’t make sense to do so by relying on touch. This is why we have voice commands to activate Siri.

Until now, you had to rely on the previous method to extend Siri’s pause time. But thanks to Apple listening to users, it has now introduced a setting with iOS 16 that lets you extend Siri’s pause time. And here’s how to do it:

  1. Launch Settings on your iPhone.
  2. Navigate to Accessibility.
  3. Scroll down and tap Siri under General.  
  4. Under Siri Pause Time, you can choose from DefaultLonger, or Longest. The Default setting offers the lowest pause time, and you’re better off selecting from Longer or Longest based on your needs.  
Steps highlighted to change Siri wait time in iPhone Accessibility settings

Once you’ve made the necessary changes, you don’t have to worry about Siri responding before you’ve finished your sentence.

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