You only have two ways to start up Siri to give her commands. One is the old-fashioned way that's been around since she was baked into iOS 5 in 2011: hold down the home button until you see "What can I help you with?" on screen with a waveform animation at the bottom (it'll spike as you talk, so you can tell she hears you). If you've got an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus that's plugged in—or a 6s or 6s Plus that's plugged in or not—you can just say "Hey Siri" to activate (much like Amazon's Alexa service wakes when you say "Alexa").

Make sure the hands-free Siri option is turned on. Ask Siri, "go to settings for Siri." This is also where you can change Siri's voice from female to male, and change her accent from American to British or Australian. Having a male Brit is like talking to the Doctor or Jeeves (the original butler, not the website) all the time.

When you ask Siri a question, she shows the question at the top of the screen. Under it is a link that reads "tap to edit." If she misunderstands your command (or you're a mush-mouth, but sure, blame the defenseless AI), tap that link. Swipe down on the screen if the question disappears. You can then type in the correct word/phrase. Not only do you get what you want—she learns to understand you better.

In the lower left corner of the Siri answer screen is a ? icon in a gray circle. If you can't think of something to ask Siri, click it for suggestions. They'll cover just about every app on your phone that can tie into the voice assistant.

As long as you can activate Siri (preferably by saying "Hey Siri"), you can text (or iMessage) someone without touching the screen. Tell her "send a message to so-and-so" or "text so-and-so." Said so-and-so should be in your address book; say "and" to add multiple recipients. If you only have a number, just say "text 123-456-7890" (using the number you've got). She'll ask what you want to say; you dictate, she types it. Siri will ask "Are you ready to send it?" Ask her "review" and she'll read it back to you (this happens automatically when you talk to your iPhone over a Bluetooth connection or use headphones); or say "cancel " or "send " (or reply with a "yes," that'll also send it).

You can't send a picture or video via a message with Siri. And it's hard to send emojis, but she'll send emoticons if you say "smiley."

Ask Siri "read my text messages; if you've got unread messages, she'll read them aloud. As she finishes each, she'll ask if you want to reply. You can say "yes" or "read it again" or "no" or "no, read the next one" to keep going. Or try "call him (or her) on mobile" to reply with a phone call.

You can't exactly say "Siri, show me all pictures of my dog." At least not as of this writing. But you can ask Siri to show "all pictures taken in New York" or "show photos taken on April 6, 2015" or combine location and time. If you have Location services on, images get geo-tagged with the location, and the date-stamp is automatic, so this is easy for Siri.

Whenever you leave home or arrive at a known location, Siri can make sure there is a reminder (in the Reminders app) for you. The location could be the "home" or "work" you have listed in your personal contact listing, or even the name of local places, like restaurants or hospitals—whatever Siri will recognize. Tell her things like "remind me to take out garbage when I get home," "remind me to get gas when I leave parents," or "remind me to file the TPS reports when I get to work" or "remind me to buy pills when I arrive at the vet hospital." The command must contain a "when I arrive" or "when I leave" component.

Get time on your side: use a time instead of a location. "Remind me to take out the garbage on Tuesday night," for example. Siri defaulted to 7 p.m. on that one when I tried it, but you can give her a specific time.

Get really fancy and combine them: "Remind me when I leave home on Tuesday to take out the garbage" worked (arbitrarily picking 9 a.m. which is fair enough).

Almost anything you're looking at on the iPhone can get a reminder set by Siri. Texts, emails, web pages, podcasts—just hold down Siri as you view it and say "remind me of this" and Siri will set it up, with links back to the app and the content you were playing at the time. It won't work for all apps—it doesn't work with emails in Outlook or pages in Chrome, for example—but certainly will work with any Apple-made app. (Safari can't be in privacy mode, though.)

You need dice for a game but they're not in the box? Siri can roll dice with as many sides as you can imagine, providing a random result. "Roll a 20-sided die" and you get anywhere from one to that critical-hit of 20. Pick any number of sides. Dungeons & Dragons just lost another analog collectible. Say "roll the dice" and Siri defaults to Craps, with results for a pair of six-sided dice.

It's not a stretch to note that Siri will also flip a coin for you and pick a number between one and whatever. If you say simply "pick a number" she defaults to a numeral between 1 and 100.

Even through you say a name correctly to her, Siri may still not say it right in reply. If Siri can't get that one name properly, tell her, "that's not how you pronounce Christen" (as an example I've had). Siri will ask for your pronunciation, then give you a couple of samples to play. Pick the one you like; and if you don't like them, just go back to the original garbled mess.

Or change what Siri calls you, at least. Tell her "call me 'Darth Vader'" or whatever else you can think of. She'll happily start referring to you by your preferred title. Just remember, she's going to do so out loud, maybe even in public. Be sure it's a label you don't mind everyone knowing, because everyone is going to know you picked that the name yourself, "MacDaddy."

One of the initial failings of Siri was, it didn't talk more to the hardware inside iPhones and iPads. Now it can actually be used to not only turn on or off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, it can also be used to go into Airplane mode. Next time a flight attendant tells you to turn off the phone, tell Siri "activate airplane mode." Siri will warn you that she won't work after that happens; you can say yes or tap the screen to activate or cancel. Then show the flight crew or Sky Marshall you're compliant, so you can still play solitaire during take-off.

If you tend to say "Dad" instead of "Gerry," (like I do) then it helps if Siri knows which of your contacts is your actual papa (and mama, and the rest of your family). Give each one a contact entry—including yourself, if you haven't already. You could go into Contacts to label each person with their relationship to you, but it's easy to do with Siri. Say "Lindsay Griffith is my wife" (girlfriend, partner, spouse, fiancée, frienemy, nemesis, etc.) Confirm it and it's done. View it by going into Contacts and looking at your entry. (I tried to set up other relationships between people in my contacts, but that doesn't work from Siri.)

Now, instead of saying "Texting Lindsay," you can say "text my wife"—or set up meetings, make calls to, get their location (if they use the Find My Friends app on an iOS device), and more.

Your voice assistant works particularly well with Apple's much-improved Maps. Tell her "Get me to" a location of your choice. If she can pinpoint the location, she'll bring up the directions and start navigation immediately. Ask specifically for walking directions to get modified steps on getting there step-by-step. As you go, if you prefer to have the screen off, ask Siri for an "ETA" and get updated estimated times of arrival. Say "take me to my husband" and (if the person tagged as such is sharing their location with you) you'll be able to meet up all the faster—even if they're on the move.

Previously, if you asked Siri to convert something from, say, pounds to grams, you got shunted to a website. Now, she'll show you the conversion results herself, and for a lot more than just weight. Distance, time, temperature, fluids...you ask for a conversion, she can usually handle it.

Other things you can ask Siri to do: how to spell difficult words. Ask her to do simple math that's still too much to do in your head ("what's 180+122+4077?") or "what's the tip on $80?" (she reads back the amount for 18 percent by default; Siri's a cheap date.)

When you hear a song you can't identify, ask Siri "What's the name of this song?" and let her listen. Siri works with the service Shazam to tell you who sings it—it's much faster than fumbling to open the Shazam app itself. Naturally, she also tries to sell it to you via iTunes.

If you're one of the 13 million subscribers to Apple Music (as of April 2016), you might have done so because it's so easy to control your music access via Siri. Ask her to play a specific song, a song by a specific artist, from a specific playlist, from a specific album (even an artist's first or last album if you don't know the name), chart toppers ("Siri, play the top songs of 1985"), skip tracks, make sure you never hear a track again ("Don't play this track again"), ask her to play more songs like the one playing, like songs you enjoy the most to create a "most liked" playlist on the fly, and, of course, buy songs. If you don't use Apple Music, Siri will just give you some info about tracks you ask to play.

If you're big into keeping the status updated on Facebook or tweeting the day away on Twitter, Siri makes it hands-free. "Post a message to Twitter" (or Facebook) will get Siri asking what you want to say. Say it. She posts it. If you have multiple Twitter accounts, she's going to use the one most recently accessed on the Twitter app. Facebook updates send the status directLY to your timeline; you can't post to groups or events or other people's timelines.

Maybe better: Ask Siri "What is Patton Oswalt saying in Twitter" (or your favorite Twitter account). Use handles or names. Siri will pull up the last 10 tweets by or @mentions for that person for you to read.

A weird one for Siri: ask her to "take a selfie" and she'll activate the camera. It'll still be facing the way it was when you last used it—not automatically using the front camera as you'd expect with a selfie—but it's a hands-free way to get the camera up if needed. (Image)

See a plane overhead and wonder if the person you just dropped at the airport is aboard? Ask Siri "what planes are flying overhead" and you'll get a grid showing not only the airlines and flight numbers in the sky over you, but also the type of plane and its altitude. It seems more advanced than even the screens at the control tower. The data comes from Wolfram Alpha.

Naturally, you can use Siri to set an alarm. Plug in the iPhone to charge at bedtime, yell out "Hey Siri," and when you hear the response tone say, "Set alarm for 8am" (or another more reasonable hour). Do that a few times for different alarms and you build up a lot of alarms that aren't used much. Tell Siri "delete all alarms" and after a confirmation, they're wiped.

The ease of using "hey Siri" also makes Siri inherently insecure: anyone can get access to certain features on the phone even if you use a passcode/fingerprint. Many of those things tend to be innocuous—like weather or the clock. When I did a "hey Siri, what time is it," never coming near the Touch ID, Siri happily gave me the time—but wouldn't give me access to the iPhone itself. (If you've seen a video claiming otherwise, it's been thoroughly debunked.) A recent iOS update explicitly makes sure this can't happen even if you use Siri to try to get to Contacts or Photos or the Camera. However, I was able to post to Twitter and Facebook and send texts and make calls and turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth—all without putting in a code or using a fingerprint. So someone taking your phone may not get access to your data—but they can do some reputation damage pretending to be you, or disconnect you from networks.

If you're worried that by turning on the "Hey Siri" option that anyone in earshot can take control of your iPhone, don't. In iOS 9, activating "Hey Siri" in settings leads to a tutorial where you say the phrase and a few other things over and over to train Siri to your voice alone for activation.

However, anyone who holds down the home button can still talk to your iPhone's assistant. To stop that, tell Siri "take me to Touch ID and Passcode settings." You'll need to re-enter your passcode to get access. Scroll down to the "Allow Access When Locked:" area. You can turn off Siri access from the lock-screen here (and other items like Apple Wallet). After that, you can only use Siri by accessing the iPhone first; you also lose the ability to do any Voice Dialing.

Naturally, Siri will help you find a local business by name and get to it: say "Siri, give me directions to Bools Flower Shop" to get a map. If you don't know the local shop, ask "give me a list of local flower shops" for a list from Yelp. It's even better with restaurants. Ask for a specific type of cuisine ("show me a list of nearby Italian restaurants") and if it requires a reservation, say "Make me a reservation for 2 at 7pm at Mercato." For reservations, you need to have the OpenTable app installed, and, of course, an OpenTable account, and the restaurant has to have an OpenTable listing. Otherwise, Siri will give you the restaurant's number.

When you use Siri for dictation—even if it's just with the microphone on the iPhone keyboard—you don't have to leave out the punctuation. When you end a sentence, say "period," or "question mark," or "exclamation point." You can throw in a semicolon (;) or ellipsis (...) as needed. And you can say "open quotes" or "close quotes" to enclose a line in quotation marks; same thing with parentheses ("open parenthesis" and "close parenthesis.") It makes a huge difference in readability.

Sometimes Siri's a little loud for a public back-and-forth. Go into Settings > General > Siri (or ask her to "open Siri settings") on your iOS device, and click Voice Feedback. In general, the Control with Ring Switch is enough—it means if you turn off the ringer on the side of the iPhone, Siri won't chat back at you when you ask for something—but you'll still get the feedback you need on screen. Conversely, set Siri Voice Feedback to Hands-Free Only and you'll never hear the voice again—unless you activate her using "hey Siri," or when connected via Bluetooth, a headset, or in a vehicle using CarPlay.