Permission to Speak Freely, Siri?
I know all the cool kids are on 18.0 and 18.1 for brat beta summer, but I never want to roll the dice with iOS betas on my iPhone. So imagine my surprise after a perfectly normal iOS update (17.6.1) arrived, and the Siri location permissions changed.
The first time I asked Siri for the temperature, it made me unlock my iPhone first, then prompted me with “You’ll need to turn on Location Services for that. Want to turn it on just this once or when using Siri?”
This was confusing for a number of reasons, but mostly because that’s never happened before. We’ve all been talking about the imbalance in Apple’s pervasive permissions requests over user experience, so it shouldn’t be shocking to see a completely new level of permissions inserted into the mix.
I want to dissect this specific addition, because it seems to make the least sense to me out of all of them, and it’s not a beta release, but shipping software intended for every normal person.
It’s just a sleepy summer release
Nowhere in the release notes for iOS 17.6.1 does Apple say that they’re going to do anything with changing permissions on your iOS device. Here’s what Apple says: “This update includes important bug fixes and addresses an issue that prevents enabling or disabling of Advanced Data Protection.”
Bug fixes? I love that for me.
Digging into the 17.6.0 security release notes on Apple’s web site (they do not have notes for 17.6.1), there’s no announced change for location services, and the only time “location” is mentioned is for a Family Sharing-related issue. There are other changes that do mention Siri, but none of them mention this permissions change. If there was a specific exploit related to this change it’s not spelled out anywhere, and none of the tech blogs that comb through releases even mentioned it. Which adds to the surreality where you doubt whether you changed it yourself, somehow.
Then I started to wonder if I ever had 17.6.0, or if it was 17.5.1 straight into 17.6.1. I couldn’t tell you, which adds to the feeling that someone from Apple silently entered my house and replaced my shoes with identical ones that were a half size bigger overnight.
The inability to pinpoint when something that used to work changed in the blink of an eye, or even an acknowledgement that it’s different, doesn’t make a person feel especially secure.
Let’s unlock
If your iPhone is locked and sitting on a nightstand, and you asked “Hey Siri, what’s the temperature,” it will say, “You’ll need to unlock your iPhone first.” You pick it up and stare at it and maybe it unlocks or you have to swipe it to get it to try FaceID again. Congratulations, you’re really taking advantage of having a hands-free digital assistant.
Once your iPhone is showing your unlocked lock screen, it informs you it can’t perform the action you requested. It says you need to turn on Location Services. That’s confusing, because it is on in general. You also are aware that you didn’t change any of your permissions since the last time you did this action causing further confusion.
The new default setting Apple chose for you didn’t exist before. It’s located under Settings: Privacy & Security: Location Services: Siri (Siri & Dictation in older versions of iOS). Prior versions had “Never” or “While Using the App,” with the user default being the latter. In the update, Apple has changed it from “While Using the App” to “Ask Next Time Or When I Share”.
If your iPhone is unlocked and active, you’ll get the modal location warning on top of the modal Siri dialog. I don’t know why you’d ask while you’re actively using the phone instead of just looking at your many weather widgets, but the point is that it is not consistent. This modal dialog offers clearer choices than the Siri dialog, but the two together aren’t helping.
Again, the big problem is that Apple’s update has reset the setting on your behalf, and it’s up to you to change it back without any understanding of why Apple wanted to change it, or how your privacy and security is affected if you change it back.
It can’t possibly be the new default, because Apple expects people to unlock their iPhone to ask for the weather. Apple can’t expect you to put up with a confirmation about sharing data each time you ask, despite that being the default setting. That would be ludicrous.
Apple will sometimes reset a permission to motivate developers to move away from a deprecated or unsafe system, but… this is Apple’s own Siri we’re talking about here. Sometimes Apple does this sort of thing to make it clear that personal data is being used for certain things. But if I asked for the weather at my location, then I know that.
Consider: Siri can change the setting for you, but you have to unlock your iPhone beforehand, not after you make your selection. Do we not teach people how to make flowcharts any more? Why would unlocking the phone be the first step?
Asking the user a compound question is also a terrible idea, so that’s why the boffins on the security and privacy team choose it.
- Want to turn it on just this once?
- Or while using Siri?
If you say “yes” it counts as an answer to the first part of the question and will show you the requested information without changing the setting. If you awkwardly respond, “while using Siri,” then it will change the setting to what you presumably were using before 17.6.1: “While Using the App.”
If you say “no” or “never” it’ll change the permission setting to “Never” and say that it can’t tell you your location because of your settings, then ask you to say what location you’d like to hear the weather for.
This is a poorly worded prompt with multiple possible answers and no logical, practical use case other being an obstacle for the iPhone owner.
At Least They Don’t Ask When You’re Driving
If you happen to be in a car, and your iPhone is connected to CarPlay, and ask it for any directions, then it will prompt you with “Allow ‘Siri’ to use your location?” It won’t ask to unlock the iPhone to change the permission, because your iPhone has to be unlocked on a periodic basis to work with the car. That gives it the authority to change your settings.
Again, this will perplex anyone that used CarPlay prior to the permissions change, because it never used to ask this. At least the three possible options on this screen are clearly written and correspond to the three permissions, like the modal iOS dialog, and unlike the Siri dialog. Allow Once is the new, sucky permission that the interface defaults to selecting.
Is my life safer or more private?
I don’t understand why this disruptive change happened. It doesn’t seem to offer any tangible security or privacy benefit. If we assume that there was a reason, mysterious though it may be, why did the user experience have to be so bad? I don’t see an ounce of care in the execution.
If this is happening to lay the groundwork for Apple Intelligence, now seems to be the wrong time to push out such a change—when users can’t possibly make an informed decision about features that won’t ship for months. Presumably the permission I assign today will carry through, unless Apple resets my choice again.
Maybe the new policy is to reset this switch after all updates, or certain updates? I definitely didn’t expect it, but maybe that’s just the first time of many and I’ll be periodically derailed from my thought process because I have to make a choice again, all because I made the bad decision to update my phone.
This is merely one minor example—though given the size of the iPhone market, it will impact millions of Apple customers. How did it come to be? If it’s important, why was it done this way? Maybe Apple could explain itself somewhere. Like, say, the release notes.
[Joe Rosensteel is a VFX artist and writer based in Los Angeles.]
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