Siri doesn't recognize my contacts any longer

[cwa107]

For many years, I've been using Siri to either make calls or send text messages to several people, my wife in particular. Just recently, I noticed that Siri doesn't seem to recognize any of my contacts. She will pause for a few moments and then say "Sorry, I don't see <name> in your contacts. Can you try again?". If I tap 'other', I can then tap her contact info, but Siri still doesn't proceed to text/call.... Instead, she'll pause and say "I'm having a bit of trouble here. Can you please try that again?".

She also can't seem to play my music or take a note, and the error is again completely non-specific. It's like Siri can't directly access data stored on my phone.

I've Googled a bit, tried resetting my phone (and wiping/restoring), added "Phoentic names" to my contacts and experimented with various settings for Siri, but nothing seems to help. At this point, I'd be willing to try anything as Siri is completely useless to me now.

 

[mrplow]

Some basic questions, apologies up front:

1. do you have a working 3g/4g/wi-fi connection?
2. is the behaviour the same on both cellular and wi-fi?
3. are your contacts stored on the phone only/phone and iCloud/phone and other cloud based store (gmail etc)?
4. depending on which iPhone you have, are the results the same handsfree and with the home button held down?

 

[IWT]

@cwa, Hi Chris,

I let someone else reply because my experience is microscopic in relation to yours. As there are no shouts of Eureka, perhaps I can just say what I did when this happened on my iPhone 6.

To be honest, it was more that Siri wasn't working, intermittently, and not just Contacts.

I went into Settings > General > Siri and turned off Siri and Hey Siri. Then hard reboot. Then turned on Siri only (not Hey Siri), then changed the Gender and Accent of the Siri Voice. Got it working right away with American Female instead of British Male. Then turned on Hey Siri. It worked. Then changed Accent and Gender back to my preferences and it's been fine since.

I can't imagine that you haven't been there & bought the T shirt on this; but if it helps at all......

Ian

 

[vansmith]

Apparently, Siri only works for calls if FaceTime is enabled but I just disabled FaceTime and I was still able to request a call be made through Siri. It might be worth checking this though.

Do you have restrictions on by any chance (Settings > General > Restrictions)?

 

[IWT]

Apparently, Siri only works for calls if FaceTime is enabled

I have FaceTime disabled on all my Apple devices from day one. Siri has always worked fine — except for the occasion mentioned in my post. Since then, still working. Just for info.

Ian

 

[cwa107]

Some basic questions, apologies up front:

1. do you have a working 3g/4g/wi-fi connection?
2. is the behaviour the same on both cellular and wi-fi?
3. are your contacts stored on the phone only/phone and iCloud/phone and other cloud based store (gmail etc)?
4. depending on which iPhone you have, are the results the same handsfree and with the home button held down?

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Contacts are synced with iCloud only (not Gmail or Yahoo, which are the two providers I use for email).
4. It's an iPhone 6 (not Plus, not S) and yes, same result either way.

I have since done a full restore (erase all) and gone back to a recent backup and the behavior remains the same. I then did a restore back to March when I first got the phone and it worked. But once I had synced all of my music/photos back with iTunes, it started failing in the same way.

And just to be clear, it's not just Contacts that are a problem. If I ask Siri to shuffle songs, she thinks for a minute and then says "Uh oh, something's wrong. Can you try that again?". Same thing for creating a new note, a new reminder or basically anything that involves manipulating the iPhone's data.

I'm really stumped on this one, I have to tell you - but thanks for the assist.

 

[cwa107]

@cwa, Hi Chris,

I let someone else reply because my experience is microscopic in relation to yours. As there are no shouts of Eureka, perhaps I can just say what I did when this happened on my iPhone 6.

To be honest, it was more that Siri wasn't working, intermittently, and not just Contacts.

I went into Settings > General > Siri and turned off Siri and Hey Siri. Then hard reboot. Then turned on Siri only (not Hey Siri), then changed the Gender and Accent of the Siri Voice. Got it working right away with American Female instead of British Male. Then turned on Hey Siri. It worked. Then changed Accent and Gender back to my preferences and it's been fine since.

I can't imagine that you haven't been there & bought the T shirt on this; but if it helps at all......

Ian

Hi Ian,

I had experimented with the accent, but not the gender previously. I just went ahead and did exactly as you described and there was no difference in behavior. Thanks for trying.

 

[cwa107]

Apparently, Siri only works for calls if FaceTime is enabled but I just disabled FaceTime and I was still able to request a call be made through Siri. It might be worth checking this though.

Do you have restrictions on by any chance (Settings > General > Restrictions)?

FaceTime is enabled. I don't have restrictions turned on either.

Thanks for the ideas.

 

[vansmith]

I have FaceTime disabled on all my Apple devices from day one. Siri has always worked fine — except for the occasion mentioned in my post. Since then, still working. Just for info.

Ian

Yeah, FT is enabled here and that's never got in the way for me but I read this online.

Chris, can you access external data? So, can you get Siri to give you weather info (for example)?

 

[cwa107]

Yeah, FT is enabled here and that's never got in the way for me but I read this online.

Chris, can you access external data? So, can you get Siri to give you weather info (for example)?

Yep, that she can do.

 

[vansmith]

I'm admittedly out of ideas here. That said, I have seen a few threads where people have noted this as a problem and two different issues are coming up: (a) Siri is down (which I doubt since it's still working here) or (b) the issue is specific to the 6s. There's also a StackExchange thread here that seems to have an issue with some U.S. carrier specific fixes. I don't see that fixing the music/note issue but it's a start (if you use one of those carriers and are willing to try that fix).

 

[cwa107]

I'm admittedly out of ideas here. That said, I have seen a few threads where people have noted this as a problem and two different issues are coming up: (a) Siri is down (which I doubt since it's still working here) or (b) the issue is specific to the 6s. There's also a StackExchange thread here that seems to have an issue with some U.S. carrier specific fixes. I don't see that fixing the music/note issue but it's a start (if you use one of those carriers and are willing to try that fix).

Yeah, it's quite perplexing. As you might imagine, I have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at it.

Right now, I'm once again on my March 2015 backup and it's working. I wouldn't be surprised if it stops again at some point, I'll just have to try to track as I make changes.

Thanks for all the help folks.

 

[vansmith]

Glad to hear that you've got things working again. Hopefully this doesn't come back anytime soon.

 

[TorianK]

Hi! I'm new to this forum so bare with me.

I recently upgraded to the iPhone6sPlus and I was having the same issue with Siri. It worked fine with weather, random questions, etc. I would ask Siri to call/text a contact and it would give me the same error messages. Same with trying to play my music. I did everything I could think of to fix this. Research online, on the phone with Apple support for a total of 5 hours, emails, everything.

I just recently installed iOS9.3 and suddenly Siri works perfect for me. This must have fixed some kind of bug. I hope this helps!

 

[cwa107]

Hi! I'm new to this forum so bare with me.

I recently upgraded to the iPhone6sPlus and I was having the same issue with Siri. It worked fine with weather, random questions, etc. I would ask Siri to call/text a contact and it would give me the same error messages. Same with trying to play my music. I did everything I could think of to fix this. Research online, on the phone with Apple support for a total of 5 hours, emails, everything.

I just recently installed iOS9.3 and suddenly Siri works perfect for me. This must have fixed some kind of bug. I hope this helps!

Thanks for taking the time to share your experience. As it happens, I was able to restore Siri functionality with a backup from an earlier time and without allowing it to sync to iTunes on my Mac. I believe you're right though.. I think they had some kind of bug in an earlier release that they needed to get worked out, and it only manifested itself under specific circumstances.

Either way, all is well with mine now -- and I'm glad yours is too.

Take care.

 

[Bonnypope]

Siri doesn't recognize my contacts

I, too have been using Siri to text and make calls for a few years. I have the exact same problems you do - ALL of them. Suddenly Siri no longer finds or sees my contacts. These are listed under Siri when I check Settings > "My Info". HoweverI, "My Info" Says "NONE" next to it. This does not seem to be something I can change or modify. I recently updated my own email address. Wondering if you may have done the same? I have updated my email in my contacts as well as my Apple identity.

 

[MacInWin]

OK, go to Settings/Siri and My Info. Now when the list of contacts pops up, tap YOUR name. I think that will fix it for you.

 

[dwo2902]

Reset All Settings worked for me

Thanks for taking the time to share your experience. As it happens, I was able to restore Siri functionality with a backup from an earlier time and without allowing it to sync to iTunes on my Mac. I believe you're right though.. I think they had some kind of bug in an earlier release that they needed to get worked out, and it only manifested itself under specific circumstances.

Either way, all is well with mine now -- and I'm glad yours is too.

Take care.

In addition to the infuriating "I don't see <contact> in your contacts" message (after asking which of the contact's phone number's to use), I was having issues connecting to my work wifi network. This was all on a brand new iPhone 7 that I had just restored from backup. After an hour or so of fiddling with turning Siri on and off, Turning Hey Siri on and off, and hard rebooting, I tried the suggestion of resetting all settings (Settings > General > Reset > Reset all settings). That did the trick!

 

[DrewLouis]

I figured it out - for now

I turned off Siri then shut down phone. I turned on phone and restarted Siri - viola!