I use Siri fairly often when walking, biking, or just when my hands are busy. One of my frustrations is that Siri hates playing the music I ask for. I used to have a playlist named “Essentials”, and I would frequently say “Hey Siri, shuffle Essentials”. That didn’t work 99% of the time – she’d find some artist’s “essentials” playlist or album on Apple Music and start playing that. So I changed the name to “Jon’s Essentials”, and now when I say “Hey Siri, shuffle Jon’s Essentials”, about 75% of the time I get back “Shuffling John Sanchez on Apple Music”. This is annoying because A) I didn’t want to listen to John Sanchez and B) Apparently no one else did either because there’s no music for him on Apple Music.
So, what is the solution? Shortcuts app to the rescue. I recently created a very simple shortcut – a menu with my favorite playlist names in it, and then a “Play Music” action for each option. Now when I say “Hey Siri, play my tunes”, she asks what playlist, I say one of the options, and it starts playing. It shouldn’t be this hard, but unless I want to remember to say “Hey Siri, shuffle my playlist named Jon’s Essentials” (Which works about 80% of the time), it’s just easier.
