Have you heard about ‘vocal Shortcuts’ in iOS 18?

As someone who tends to use my job as an excuse to purchase new gadgets so that I can explore them at my leisure my latest purchase of a new iPhone meant that I discovered ‘vocal shortcuts’ which is an absolute gamechanger for anyone with atypical speech. Siri can be quite difficult for some people to pronounce meaning not everyone can activate Siri it by voice command and if you are unable to activate it by touch then it makes Siri very difficult to use. Vocal shortcuts allow you to create custom voice commands to perform specific actions on your iPhone or iPad.

You can use custom Commands and assign unique phrases to trigger system actions (like opening the camera or turning on the flashlight), Siri requests, or even shortcuts from the Shortcuts app.

What’s even better is vocal shortcuts are designed to accommodate diverse speech patterns, making it especially helpful for individuals with atypical speech and you can train your iPhone to recognise your specific way of saying a phrase.

To activate Vocal Shortcuts, navigate to Settings > Accessibility > Vocal Shortcuts and from there, you can set up custom phrases for various actions.

I’m enjoying exploring other accessibility features on my new phone but this one is my favourite so far.