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Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

> The new [Timers] UI is impossible to use hands-free.

"Siri, start a 5 minute timer."

What makes this extra nice on Series 9 is that simple Siri requests are handled completely on-device. https://www.engadget.com/apple-watch-series-9-can-handle-sir...

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I don't have as many issues with the Timers UI as the author does, but I will say for me that using Siri while cooking is mostly a no-go, because I have my Watch, my AirPods on, and a HomePod somewhere within earshot, and I only want the Timer to start on my Watch, which is not usually what's going to happen.

Raise-to-speak is the answer here. It's guaranteed to go to your watch, without all the device-negotiation that saying "Siri" causes: so long as you don't say "Siri", it'll be unambiguously on the watch.

That said, very annoyingly, WatchOS 10 seems to have regressed the raise-to-speak behavior, and it's being super-finicky for me. I've had to retry a lot of times, and had to fall back on long-pressing the crown sometimes, which reacts really slowly now when this is happening. (I think this might be it trying to negotiate microphone usage with my AirPods when I'm wearing them or suchlike, in which case Apple needs to stop doing that.)

Long press the crown and say timer 5 minutes

You can't use your hands.

If it’s because you’re cooking and your hands are dirty you can press it with your wrist or forearm

Now that's a far, far more annoying problem than Timers UI changes.

Yeah, I don't necessarily expect it to know that I always want my Watch, but I wish I could say "start a 10 minute timer on my watch" and have it do that.

Yes! Or sync timers and do the expected thing regardless of what device "catches" subsequent requests.

You have to raise your wrist to your mouth first to prime Siri, which may not be easy to do while cooking.

I mean, the author does talk about using the watch with their nose. Same motion.

Fair, I admit I am not an expert in nose dexterity.

Gotta get dex to 75 before unlocking that perk.

Not to mention when she gets things wrong.

which works EASILY 90% of the time

there is a direct response to that in the article:

> Setting a timer manually is much quicker and safer than relying on Siri. A kitchen also tends to be a noisy place, with multiple conversations and background music. If Siri doesn’t understand what you’ve said, you’re going to end up with burnt onions.

Unreliable interfaces suck.

Unless it mishears you and turns it into a network request, which uploads your entire address book to Apple.

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