Siri, the personal assistant feature that is available on newer iOS devices, isn’t as good as Apple would want us to think it is.

Though it works quite well for alarms, reminders, notes, calendar and the weather, its speech-to-text engine isn’t very good, especially if, like me, you’re living in a country that Siri doesn’t support officially.

Thankfully, I’ve found a workaround for Siri’s inability to understand my accent — entering my commands or requests to Siri manually using the iPhone’s virtual keyboard.

Here’s how it works:

• Fire up Siri by long pressing the Home button
• Say something very short, and tap the Siri button
• Once it responds, scroll back up and tap the bubble showing what Siri heard you say.
• You should now be able to edit your request by typing. You will now be able to enter the request manually without having to worry about whether Siri understands your accent.

• If some of the text is underlined in blue, then you can tap it and tap on one of the alternatives suggested by Siri, or replace the text by typing.

• Tap on the Done button to get Siri’s response.

Admittedly, this isn’t the textual Siri that a lot of people have asked for, but it’s a good workaround for me as I like Siri’s artificial intelligence and integration with native iOS apps.

It’s also a good workaround in a noisy environment where Siri has trouble understanding you.