Asking Siri to turn off the flashlight turns off the iPhone

[tyrone841]

Yes, I know how crazy that sound.
Info: am using German as my main phone language.

• I ask Siri to turn on the flashlight („Taschenlampe an“)
• Siri shows what she understands and immediately turns on the flashlight
• I ask Siri to turn it off („Taschenlampe aus“)
• Once again she displays the text she understood - perfectly correct
• Then she asks me „if I am sure to turn off this device“ and I was like „Duh - sure“

Guess how surprised I was to hear the shutdown sound and the screen go blank and the iPhone turn off.

I tried it several more times and turning it ON always works fine, turning it OFF however always wants to turn off the phone.

I‘ve double checked that the name of my phone is NOT „flashlight“

This used to work perfectly fine whenever I used it (rarely). Can ANY of you reproduce this? Especially in German?

PS: it doesn’t matter if I say „Hey Siri“ or trigger her with the side key.

 

[Sirious]

Maybe a simple translation error on their end - just submit it as feedback!

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[tyrone841]

Well, since trying it on my iPhone Xs Max next to it and here it works perfectly fine, I can hardly imagine it being a translation error. However, I will submit the feedback. Thanks.

 

[tyrone841]

I've actually called Apple Support on this, after all I'm paying for my Apple Care+.

The experience was a bit weird. The first woman tried to tell me to switch Siri off and back on again, but offered no further explanation. When I asked her how to exactly do it (since you can't switch off Siri, just enable/disable certain features) she connected to my phone and directed me to Accessibility settings, but without actually changing something.

She then forwarded my call to a "superior agent" or something like that. What we did is check the "System Files" size in the iPhone Storage overview, which is roughly around 16 gigs, and "that is way too much" according to that guy. He suggested I made a complete restore and set up my phone from my backup... to get Siri to be able to switch off the flashlight... yeah sure. That says a lot of how much they have no f***ing clue what is going on.

I told him kindly that I there is no way of nuking my phone after I set it up as a NEW phone when I got it just roughly 2 months ago and thanked him and hung up.

My solution: I set up a shortcut with the exact name of the "turn flashlight off" command, and now it turns off, because it actually executes the shortcut. Super weird, but does the little trick for me.

 

[addamas]

Zero problems with Siri with English (US) and (UK)

I guess that Siri, as already suggested, has some kind of bug with translation linking to action - where instead of “turn flashlight off” it’s “turn off”.

Edit: somehow I have not seen last post. Sorry for confusion

 

[4hwhii0ce]

I have exactly the same problem (in German).

 

[WildstarBR2020]

Tested here with my iP14PM in English (US) and Japanese, no errors.

 

[Kottu]

Works in Swedish without any error

 

[iSuzan]

Hello from Germany.

I cannot help you and never used Siri for the turning the flashlight on and off. But I was curious.

And I can confirm this bug with German OS and German language. Very very strange.

 

[tyrone841]

Thanks a lot for everyone trying this out. I have already sent a bug report to Apple, but who knows when they will fix it (or if they ever will).

@iSuzan I hardly ever use Siri for anything more than timers / weather either (because she is not really that helpful in German), but this one time my hands were full and I wanted her to switch off the flashlight Thanks for trying it out though!