Hey Siri, take a selfie. No, selfie!

By Rene Ritchie
last updated

Some of you will quickly determine this is the dumbest thing you've read on the internet this week. Others will find it so totes important it's ridic. I make no judgements either way. I just call your attention to it: Siri, Apple's virtual personal assistant, as currently implemented, can't take a selfie.

I'll pause while you collect yourself... Okay, onward. You can tell Siri to take a selfie, and Siri will respond by launching the built in Camera app... but that's it. Siri won't switch to the front FaceTime camera. It'll just stay on the rear iSight camera. That's fine for an elsie, but not for a selfie.

The 3D Touch home screen shortcut for "Selfie" on the iPhones 6 can, in fact, launch straight into the FaceTime camera. That makes it seem like it should be possible for Siri to do the same. Since Siri takes the command, it's even fair to assume Siri should do the same.

Since it currently can't, though, there are a few alternatives.

  • If you have one of the iPhones 6s, you can use the aforementioned 3D Touch home screen shortcut.
  • If you want to stick with Siri, once the iSight camera launches, you can tap the camera switcher button to toggle to the FaceTime camera.
  • Or you can launch the Camera app normally, switch normally, and get on with your selfie business.

Again, this may not matter to you in the least, or it may be something you really, really want. Either way, Apple has shown a remarkable ability to update Siri-as-a-service when and as needed.

So hopefully this is something the team can knock out sooner rather than later.

We've filed this bug report with Apple: rdar://25669185. Yes, seriously.

Rene Ritchie
Rene Ritchie
Contributor

Rene Ritchie is one of the most respected Apple analysts in the business, reaching a combined audience of over 40 million readers a month. His YouTube channel, Vector, has over 90 thousand subscribers and 14 million views and his podcasts, including Debug, have been downloaded over 20 million times. He also regularly co-hosts MacBreak Weekly for the TWiT network and co-hosted CES Live! and Talk Mobile. Based in Montreal, Rene is a former director of product marketing, web developer, and graphic designer. He's authored several books and appeared on numerous television and radio segments to discuss Apple and the technology industry. When not working, he likes to cook, grapple, and spend time with his friends and family.

19 Comments
  • For privacy reasons that's fine with me. Maybe it could be an option to allow that but being in a private moment, having Siri think you asked for a selfi, flipping the camera around, snapping a photo and sending it to iCloud is a bit scary to me.
  • While I appreciate the privacy argument I wonder what most people are doing that's so **** private.
  • "Others will find it so totes important it's ridic." So... you're a schoolgirl now?
  • I think that was his point - he was making a joke in the context of the fact that this article is about talking selfie's.
  • Typical of Apple. Half of the software is half-baked. Siri is so far behind anything else that has voice control. It's even behind the original Siri app by far.
  • I'd love to see siri be able to actually take the picture. One of the feature I miss from my Galaxy S7 was being able to say a command that would initiate a countdown timer until the selfie was taken. Another great feature of it was the countdown clock appeared next to the camera so that your eyes would naturally draw to looking into the camera.
  • That's weird. It works on my Note 5, I guess Apple should spend more time on getting their voice activation features right and less time aligning the ports at the bottom of the phone (just couldn't help myself). Sent from the iMore App
  • You could help yourself but you chose not to, instead you decided to look like a moron
  • That's so weird. I could've sworn this was working before. I tried it once just to test it and it opened with the camera pointing at me. I wonder if this is a bug introduced in 9.3.1 or 9.3.2? (I'm on the beta)
  • What's wrong with that? Siri can't shoot her photo indeed... But you're right, she might respond with something like "can't take selfie I'm not in good mood today"
  • What the **** is an "elsie"? Is that word actually used??
  • It's in the wanna be hipster dictionary just before totes and ridic...
  • This is funny. Hopefully it gets fixed soon.
  • Should have used Google Now, Cortana, or Hound. Posted from my Nexus 6P
  • Siri is a huge Apple embarrassment. Doesn't work 95% of the time for me. Then yesterday was helping someone new to iPhone, helping/teaching her about Siri. Everything she asked Siri was a cluster fk. Getting the current temp Siri is good for. Then she said tome, her friend said to use Google - so she wanted to download it and use it. And Google worked. Apple is so behind the eight ball with Siri. Basically useless. Asking temperature and set a timer for megs - Siri is you app. Anything else?
  • Even though it isn't a big deal, hopefully apple realizes that we should be able to ask Siri to "take a selfie" & the FaceTime front facing camera launches. Sent from the iMore App
  • I dont know what the ****  software engineers are doing there? Are they taking coffee breaks every 15 minutes? Why is this one of the biggest companies in the world and little things like this can't get fixed, like killing the music while taking a picture? Like not being able to record and pause a video (no you have to use iMovie to stitch a video) why do I have to go deep into settings to change from 1080p to 4K, why not having the toggle in the camera app so I can switch it, why apple why make things so complicated and no I'm not switching to cheap a** android software, if there was another company with a compelling hardware and software integration like apple I would've switched a long time ago and no no windows phone either but Jesus apple just change your ways this is not 2008 and if I keep going oh boy forget it, finished with my rant!
  • You gonna have an altar call after this sermon or what? Posted with the Nexus 6, Nexus 5, or Surface Pro 3
  • Chill dude. All software has bugs, and Apple isn't perfect. Nothing or no one is. I'm just grateful for the awesome tech we have today across all platforms. Sent from the iMore App