Control Siri with Head Gestures and AirPods Pro

If you use AirPods Pro, there’s a nice update in iOS 18 where you can actually shake your head or nod your head to respond to notifications as they come in through your ears. To enable this feature, I’m going to jump into the Settings app, and as long as you’re wearing your AirPods and they’re connected to your device, you can tap onto your AirPods at the top of the screen.

Scrolling down a little bit, there’s a new option for Head Gestures. Let me just quickly put my AirPods in for this bit—hang on… much better!

Okay, with the Head Gestures option, we can simply turn it on by using the toggle here, and you’ll see that it encourages you to shake your head or nod to say no or yes to notifications. These gestures can be quite subtle—you don’t have to be shaking your head like crazy in public. You can actually test them out by clicking on the button here, which will guide you through a quick walkthrough to get familiar with those gestures.

So, it’s asking me to nod, and you’ll see it’s worked because the button lit up at the bottom. On the next one, it’s asking me to shake my head, and again, the button lit up, which means it works.

And that’s all you have to do! When Siri starts reading a notification to you in your ear, you can either respond or cancel the notification so it will stop talking. You can also answer or decline calls simply by using these head gestures. It’s a really natural way to interact with Siri on iOS 18.

If you’re curious to find out what else your iPhone is capable of, I highly recommend you check out the book at the link down below. It’s called 100 QuickTips for iOS 18, and I guarantee you’ll learn loads of things you never knew your iPhone could do!