At least three of us on here have purchased m4 Mac Minis, but I haven't seen this mentioned. Those considering one ought to be forewarned that Hey Siri only works on internal microphones, so a USB external mic plugged into a Mac Mini won't listen for hey siri. I should have known this, since I also couldn't use an external mic for Siri on my Macbook Air. Their justification in the past has had something to do with privacy and security, which seems thin to me: a microphone is a microphone. I also tried plugging in my iPhone and setting it as the input device. The phone is good enough for Hey Siri, but the same device plugged into a Mac isn't. Maybe there'll be enough hue and cry about this as Apple Intelligence becomes more useful that they'll include not only the speaker but an internal mic in the next Mac mini iteration in a few years.
It continues to work normally with AirPods. It says "supported headphones," but headphones in the analog jack don't work.
BTW, a trick to make Siri with Apple Intelligence more microphone-friendly is to activate Siri with the shortcut key then immediately activate dictation with its shortcut key. Interaction with elements to get to the Talk button in the Siri Interface when Apple Intelligence is on remains troublesome, at least on my system. This gets around that. I've set the Apple Intelligence Siri shortcut to command key twice and the dictation key to Fn key twice. Those with Apple silicon Macs will know that, for whatever conceivable reason, the Siri interface is different when Apple Intelligence is turned on.
HTH
Comments
Keyboard shortcuts with several keys work for siri.
For me, if I press Command+Option+Shift+enter, this opens up the Siri interface. If I hold this shortcut, I can talk to siri. Your shortcut doesn't have to be this complicated, but it still should work if you make it to where you press and hold something rather than just press a key twice.
Thanks!
Thanks for that. I see now on the settings screen that Fn-S and custom shortcuts allow holding to speak, whereas double tapping keys don't provide that option. Just set mine to numpad 0. Very cool. Even cooler, I have the little $16 numeric keypad plugged into the mac mini, whereas my keyboard is on a KVM switch. So, I can summon Siri while I'm working on my Windows mini desktop, which is basically what I wanted hey siri for.
Studio Display
Of course, Apple's answer here would be the Studio Display, which has the processing in it for Hey Siri. I fully expect that you quite reasonably don't want to go there, but of course, together with the built-in cam and mic, this is what transforms a Mini into a modern-day iMac.