Apple's Siri To Report The News

In what is certainly a feature created with the HomePod in mind, Apple has enhanced Siri in iOS 11.2.5 beta with the ability to instantly stream a news podcast when asked about the news. The feature defaults to a daily news recap podcast by The Washington Post and lets you switch to Fox News, NPR, or CNN shows upon request.

According to 9to5mac.com, the feature only appears to work on iOS 11.2.5 beta and not earlier versions of iOS including iOS 11.2.1 which is the latest public version.

The response is also limited to situations where Siri assumes you may not see a display like when invoking Siri with the “Hey Siri’ hot phrase, when using headphones, or when using CarPlay.

HomePod, which features an illuminating touch surface but not a full display, advertises a “Hey Siri, give me the news” query which will likely rely on this feature.

When prompted with a hardware button, Siri instead defaults to showing you Apple News headlines or Safari sourced results if Apple News is uninstalled or unavailable.