‘OkSiri’ brings OK Google-like always-on Siri to iOS 7 [Jailbreak Tweak]

BY Stephen Hall

Published 29 May 2014

oksiri

Motorola’s introduction of the Moto X brought an awesome feature, always on Google Now, to the Android ecosystem. The device even packed a second low-power processor to provide the feature while still preserving battery life. Users of iOS have envied this feature since its introduction, but nothing can stop the jailbreak community apparently. OkSiri is a new tweak that brings always-on voice commands, in this case Siri, to iOS 7.

After you install the tweak, it defaults to enabling when your device is plugged in — this makes sense considering this is likely a power-hungry tweak. Likewise, the tweak will disable itself when not being powered. But you’re not restricted to these settings, as you can actually use any Activator trigger you want to enable and disable the tweak’s listening for your command.

By default, saying “Ok Siri” is how you invoke the tweak, but the tweak must be enabled as mentioned above. I changed the enable trigger to be pressing both volume buttons at the same time, and a small Siri icon in the status bar popped when the tweak was active. From there, I just said “Ok Siri” and was prompted to give her a command as I would normally. This command is changeable to be whatever you want — go for “Ok iPhone” if you’d like.

And that’s pretty much it to this tweak. Its developer says he is working on a way to completely bypass Activator activation of the tweak, but once it’s on, it should stay on and Siri should be listening for your command until you turn it off. Hopefully, a switch to keep the tweak simply always-on will eventually be implemented, but it would make sense to be cautious as it would probably cause bad battery drain.

You can get OkSiri right now on Cydia via the BigBoss repo, and it’s completely free. I’ve tested the tweak on iPhone 5 and can’t confirm nor deny its compatibility with iPad. But if I were to guess, there doesn’t seem to be any reason it wouldn’t work.