Siri Tweaks

HiddenHelper, the new jailbreak tweak for the iPhone, allows you to use Siri without the Siri interface popping up on your Home screen. This can be helpful when you want to set your alarm or dictate a note on your iPhone while you are using the device for something else, and you don't want Siri to interrupt. For example, Siri will not interrupt your Angry Birds game by displaying the note you just dictated to her. It's a great multitasking tool.

HiddenHelper also allows you to decide which Siri snippets you want displayed, and which snippets you want disabled. Asking Siri to tell you about the weather is useless without the UI because Siri displays the temperature instead of reading it to you. Wolfram Alpha queries are also pointless without Siri displaying the results.

One of my biggest gripes with Siri has been fixed thanks to a new jailbreak tweak called PersistentAssistant. The new jailbreak tool allows Siri to keep listening after you ask her a question. This eliminates the need to keep tapping the button every time you want to use Siri, allowing you to have a continuous conversation with the voice assistant.

This is the perfect tweak for impatient people who are always turning Siri on and off before she has time to do her job. It's also great for those drunk nights when you're trying to show her off to your friends because it makes her much easier to use. You can tap Siri a second time or let her automatically shutdown if you only have one question.

Here is a great Cydia add-on for international travelers. International Locations for Siri allows Siri to perform local searches outside of the U.S.. While Siri can speak several languages, and is also available in other countries, location based services are currently only available in the U.S..

I obviously can't test the tweak without leaving the country, but the $0.99 investment may be worth the risk to some frequent travelers. The add-on is available for download via the BigBoss repo. If you do not already have AssistantExtensions it will be installed when you download the tweak.

Tweaks to Siri have been cropping up regularly thanks to the untethered iPhone 4S jailbreak. AssistantExtensions in the Cydia app store is available for free, and makes it possible to add all kinds of useful conversations to Siri's repertoire. We've seen add ons to ask SIri questions about jailbreaking and have her announce the latest sports scores and schedules.

Now thanks to BatteryLevelAE, iPhone owners can ask Siri battery-related questions such as "How much talk time do I have?" Siri will respond with a rough estimate of how much juice is left on the battery for both 3G and 2G network connections.

If you're not a fan of official sports apps like me, then the new AssistantExtensions addon called SiriSports might be what you're looking for. The jailbreak tweak enables Siri to deliver sports scores and schedules for the NBA, NHL and MLB.

SiriSports is located for free in the BigBoss repo. Once installed and enabled in Settings, you can ask Siri things like: "What's the score of the Knicks game" or "Did the 76ers win last night?" Siri will then give you the latest or final scores of the game you're looking for, instead of suggesting a web search.