[Review] AssistantExtensions - Make Siri More Useful

[Anthony Bouchard]

Have you ever wanted Siri to be more useful?

Let's face it. Some of us have access to Siri and we sometimes find ourselves limited by what she is capable of. Have you ever wanted to simply use Siri to do something that she couldn't? There's an app for that! Or, should I say, tweak. It's true folks. If you want to make Siri more useful than she already is, then now you can with a free jailbreak tweak dubbed AssistantExtensions by iOS developer K3A. It's a special package that lets developers make additional extensions for Siri so that you can make her know how to do more things.

Since AssistantExtensions itself is just an architecture for developers to work off of, it doesn't really have features of its own. It just opens doors for developers to make Siri do more. But, to start you off and to keep it exciting, the developer also included a few extensions within it. The first built-in extension is demonstrated by the image above and it lets you have a conversation session with Siri. You just say something like, "Let's chat" and Siri will launch the chatting extension from this tweak to talk with you. I guess it's a way to pass time if you're bored; right?

The second extension that is built in is a YouTube search function that allows Siri to location YouTube and search for specific keywords that you ask her to look for. So let's say you saw a video on YouTube not too long ago and you don't quite remember the name of it. All you remember is that the title had the word, "bird" in it. Simply launch Siri, ask her to search for, "bird" on YouTube, and the next thing you know, you have a ton of search results from YouTube containing the word, "bird" in their titles. Below is a demonstration image of using the YouTube search function through Siri:



AssistantExtensions doesn't come with any options to configure nor does it add any icons to the home screen; it only comes with the ability to open up Siri's capabilities. We hope that developers will find this tweak useful because honestly, Siri doesn't do a whole lot. The things that we see Siri doing in Apple's television commercials are redundant and boring and are used in rarely any of our daily lives. This plugin should allow us to make her do more things - and who knows, perhaps Apple will take some tips from this development and integrate them into Siri the same way that we saw with Apple taking ideas from the jailbreak community to improve iOS 5.

AssistantExtensions does require both iOS 5 and Siri functionality and it will work on devices were Siri has been ported such as the iPhone 4. To make extensions, developer need only to follow the simple instructions that the developer of AssistantExtensions included in Cydia - link to those instructions here. Grab it and try it out; it's free in Cydia!

Name: AssistantExtensions
Price: FREE
Version: 1.0.1-3
Repo: BigBoss
Developer: K3A
Editor's Rating:  5/5

Are you going to have in-depth conversations with your beloved Siri? Share in the comments.

Sources: Cydia

[Baron10]

Lol. Siri told me her brain had just exploded and then crashed

[EastBayBeast510]

this over rides the initial siri settings.. i asked the weather and it just said "rainy".. this would be nice if there was a way to turn it on and off..

[metaserph]

This has tremendous potential, nice work.

[steda2e]

Can you turn off the chat brain without resseting Siri?

[roy4423]

this over rides the initial siri settings.. i asked the weather and it just said "rainy".. this would be nice if there was a way to turn it on and off..

It didn't override mine, brought the weather up as usual.

[fpena]

this over rides the initial siri settings.. i asked the weather and it just said "rainy".. this would be nice if there was a way to turn it on and off..

That's why I didn't installed it yet.

Watching the videos on youtube it seems this tweak overwrites a ton of default siri commands. I don't want to replace original features, just add another ones...

I'll keep with the SiriToggles (at least for now).

[Gloxin]

this over rides the initial siri settings.. i asked the weather and it just said "rainy".. this would be nice if there was a way to turn it on and off..

Im sorry but im gonna have to disagree with your comment. I just asked Siri "How is the Weather?" and she answered correctly, she responded "Here's the forecast for today through this Monday

[Striknine]

I installed it and can't find any initial settings that have been overwritten. Everything is fine so far and I checked my usual questions/commands. Let me know if there are any commands that behave differently after installing the extensions architecture and I'll see if they work on my end to compare.

[steda2e]

When u say let's chat u can't get back to normal without switching Siri on and off again and when u ask for the weather it'll say rain or something like that

[risingkazuya05]

Can you turn off the chat brain without resseting Siri?

You just have to say "goodbye"

I am now unable to look for any local businesses, restaurants or locations! I live in the US! 😞

[fpena]

Do I need SBSettings to use "Turn On Setting" commands??? Too bad :/ because I don't have it installed and I'm not pretending to do it...

My springboard crashed three times after this tweak installation. Don't know why, but it finally worked. Anyone else?

[EastBayBeast510]

to all the people that said it doesn't effect them.. have you tried it after enabling the chat?

[EastBayBeast510]

You just have to say "goodbye"

I am now unable to look for any local businesses, restaurants or locations! I live in the US! 

WORKS!!!! thanks

[AKCHRIS]

Pretty sweet. Siri is the deal breaker on the iPhone.

[chriscoyne]

Working fine for me too. No problem with other Siri features

[fpena]

I don't know what to do... Install sbsettings or get back to SiriToggles (which gave me settings commands without the need of sbsettings). Am I the only one to complain about that?

IMHO, with sbsettings the voice commands will be pretty useless as you can simply slide down notification center and activate the toggles...

[steda2e]

Thanks working great now

[fpena]

I end up installing SBSettings and it's very good actually. And works FINE with AssistantExtensions.

How can I remove sbsettings title and version in the notification center? The option is disable but it keeps showing: SBSettings v5.2.2

[rstuvwxyz]

has anybody encountered error 16 when adding new files to assitantextensions through ssh? i have a 4s and edited some text files which using cyberduck i dragged and dropped. triple checked everything but somehow the file saved as aiml.txt. i renamed through cyberduck and all seemed well until i attempted to start a condo. after trying to load her brain siri says her brain has exploded due to error 16 then list the extension which includes my custom condo. tried deleting said file and cyberduck does not allow me, also tried uninstall/install of assitantextension. any help would be appreciated.