Obviously nobody wants to be in an emergency situation, but if the need ever arises, Siri can come to your aid with a quick ability to dial the local emergency service line, and it works practically wherever you are in the world with the iPhone so long as it has a cellular connection.
There’s not much to this trick, it’s just knowing one of the proper phrases to say to initiate the emergency call. And yes, it works with the hands-free ‘Hey Siri’ command, so this could even work if you weren’t able to reach the iPhone but it was plugged in with that hands-free feature enabled.
Important: Siri dials Emergency Services with these iPhone commands, do not test needlessly!
This is really important, but don’t just test this aimlessly because it does actually call the local emergency service line, yes it works, but unless you’re having an actual emergency, the last thing you want is to tie up their lines with a pointless phone call. While you will have a brief countdown to cancel the call before it dials the emergency hotline, if you’re not cautious then Siri will actually call and connect to the emergency line in your region. This is for genuine emergencies only, do not abuse it!
The following phrases work to initiate an Emergency Call with Siri from an iPhone, you don’t even need to specify the number if you’re in a region where you aren’t sure what the emergency service line is, Siri and the iPhone is smart enough to figure it out.
Siri Emergency Service Dialing Commands
Summon Siri, or use Hey Siri, and issue the following commands to call an emergency line – DO NOT CALL WITHOUT A REAL EMERGENCY:
- “Call emergency services”
- “Dial 911″
- “Phone 911″ (9-1-1 is the USA emergency line, using this phrase outside of the USA will also dial the appropriate local emergency line)
- “Phone 100″ (1-0-0 is the emergency line in India, but it will dial the appropriate line elsewhere as well)
- “Dial 100″
- “Dial 110″
- “Phone 110″ (1-1-0 is the emergency line in China, but it will dial the appropriate line where ever you are)
Siri will respond with “Calling Emergency Services in five seconds…” and a big font saying “Emergency Call” with a countdown directly underneath it saying “In 5 seconds, In 4 seconds, In 3 seconds…” etc. You’ll also find two buttons at the bottom, the “Cancel” button to stop the call before it’s connected – what you’ll want to press immediately if you test this out – and then there is the second button, “Call”, which will immediately connect the iPhone to the emergency service dispatch line.
As mentioned before, this will even work across the room with a “Hey Siri, call emergency services” if the iPhone is plugged in and Hey Siri is enabled. The countdown will happen and dial the appropriate number.
In the USA, this is the familiar 9-1-1 call to a dispatch line of first responders, usually firemen or the police, but it works abroad in other nations to connect to their emergency lines as well.
As we’ve mentioned before, and we’ll reiterate yet again, do NOT try this or aimlessly call this number just for testing purposes. Many emergency dispatch lines will send a first responder to the location of a call (typically the local police arrive first, they pinpoint the location of the call with cellular triangulation which is generally quite accurate) if there is a questionable call that goes to the center, with the idea of being “better safe than sorry”, so it is absolutely critical that you do not toy around with this feature. Only use this if you have a genuine emergency, like when you or something else actually needs firefighters, police, or paramedics.
Interestingly enough, according to TheDailyDot you could initiate this call process through an indirect question of “Siri charge my phone to 100%”, which would dial ‘100’, and thus an emergency service line (yes, even in the USA). Some users report that still works, but in my testing it would not, while all of the above mentioned commands do work to dial the appropriate number.
Hopefully you’ll never need to use this feature, but it’s certainly good to know it’s there if the need ever does arise!
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