SIRI not recognizing contacts

By peter, 12 May, 2020

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

I am using iOS 13.4.1 on my iPhone XR.

Suddenly SIRI doesn't seem to be recognizing names in my contacts list when I try to send a message.

For example I will say something like "send a text mesage to John Doe". SIRI will respond with "I don't see any John Doe in your contacts", even though John Doe is in my contacts.

Has anyone else experienced this issue and, if so, is there a recommended fix?

I tried backing up to the cloud in case that was the issue, but no luck.

Thanks.

--Pete

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Comments

By Lielle ben simon on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 06:27

Hi, i haveing this Issue I have nanny problem with Siri Lately, Siri doesn't recognize contacts, doesn't recognize my commands that i give her and it's getting wors from update too update. It's a shame for Apple.

By peter on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 06:27

After doing some googling, I may have found a solution.

I went into Settings for iCloud and toggled off syncing with Contacts. I was asked if I wanted to keep my contacts on the phone which I did.

Then I toggled syncing with Contacts back on again and was asked if I wanted to merge contacts which I did.

After that at least some of the names which Siri wasn't recognizing are now recognized. don't know about others, but this seems to be working for now.

BTW, I found lots of references on the web to other people having this problem since installing iOS 13 going back to December 2019.

Hope this helps someone. Let us know if the above works for you.

--Pete
a sked

By Peter Holdstock on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - 06:27

I’m having the same problem except I’m finding Siri seems to completely misunderstand the names I tell it and it or sometimes send a message to 2 recipients because it’s treated the surname as another contact. I found just giving the recipients first name works better but I will try the iCloud solution already mentioned. I will raise it on the Apple feedback app also as I’ve not done this yet as I thought it was only me