Thanks to a third-party app, you can track shipments with your iPhone. You just need to set the right Siri shortcuts on your applephone
Is it possible to track shipments with voice commands from Siri, the iOS personal assistant? Yes, since a few days it is possible thanks to the latest update of Deliveries, one of the many third-party applications available on Apple’s App Store. The update that allows you to track packages with Siri is the one that brings the App to version 8.3, was released on November 27 and introduces five types of shortcuts (i.e. Quick Commands, as Apple calls them) that can be configured by the user.
Siri Shortcuts for Tracking Shipments
The first shortcut is “Add a delivery” and does nothing more than launch the function of the same name already present in the application, as well as the second shortcut “Scan a package”. The third shortcut allows you to get an overview of all the current shipments tracked by the App. The third one is more specific and returns the shipping status of the next incoming package: if you use it from your iPhone or iPad you’ll be shown on the display also the number and the tracking details, while if you use it from the HomePod you’ll only hear when the package will arrive, but you won’t know which package it is if you have several on their way to your home at the same time.
The fifth Quick Command is also the most useful and interesting, but also the most cumbersome to set up because it requires you to create a custom shortcut for each package you want to track. To set it, you have to go to the App settings, where the tracking number of each shipment is shown on the screen, just select it and assign the desired shortcut. It’s not convenient, of course, but if you’re dealing with important packages it’s very useful and quick to use after the initial setup.
What are Siri Shortcuts and Quick Commands
Siri Quick Commands are custom voice command routines that work differently than standard commands. Standard commands perform only one task at a time, from a predetermined set of operations, are processed through the personal assistant’s artificial intelligence, and are quite flexible because Siri uses AI to try to figure out what we’re asking her.
Shortcuts, on the other hand, invoke a series of commands set by the user and associated with a specific phrase. So, if you set a shortcut with the phrase “Hey Siri, show me shipments,” it may not work if you say “Hey Siri, show me all current shipments” or other similar phrases. Siri’s shortcuts were introduced with iOS 12 (and watchOS 5) and are still evolving: it’s likely that Apple will make them smarter and more flexible in the future and allow you to use different phrases to make Siri perform the same specific and personalized action, again relying on AI and natural language understanding algorithms, which are becoming more powerful and effective by the day.