The new Siri in iOS 18.1 has a stunning new design. The floating orb at the bottom of the screen is gone. Now, Siri appears as a glowing light around the entire display.
When you activate Siri using the iPhone’s side button, you get a powerful kick of haptic feedback, and the Siri light starts from the part of the screen where the button is located. It’s a beautiful effect.
On the iPhone and iPad, Siri’s glowing design covers the whole screen, while on the Mac, Siri appears in the top-right corner.
Siri is now much better at keeping context between requests. For example, if you ask Siri what time the Cubs are playing and then follow up with “Who’s their pitcher?” Siri understands you’re still talking about the Cubs. Similarly, you can set a five-minute timer and then say, “Actually, change it to three minutes,” and Siri will update the timer immediately.
There are still some context issues with certain requests, but that’s normal for this early beta version of Apple Intelligence.
