Sharing an iCloud account and Siri

I have exactly the same issue.

Hopefully there is a fix for this.

Same setup here... Realized something was up when Siri addressed me by my wife's name. Looked under Siri in the settings section and it showed her contact info on my device. I expect this bug to be addressed as Siri matures- having to use different accounts sort of defeats the purpose of being able to share data across devices.

Hopefully Apple will come up with a solution to this problem, since I would imagine many people will find themsleves with the same issue.

Here's a workaround that has been working for me:

- On the computer where you sync your phone, add a new contact on the Computer, NOT on iCloud. On a Mac, you can set up Address Book to have locally stored contacts in addition to iCloud under Address Book Preferences. Make this new Contact your name, add your personal iCloud account email, and add it to a group called "Siri".

- Plug your phone in via USB. In iTunes, under the INFO tab, select "Sync Address Book Contacts", and "Selected Groups", and your "Siri" group. You will get a dialogue asking if you want to merge everything. You do.

- Click the "Apply" button, which will do a sync operation.

- Open Settings>General>Siri and select "My Info". Select your card from the "Siri" group.

- On your wife's phone, open Settings>General>Siri and select her own Contact.

This will cause Siri to lock specifically onto your card, and not push the info back out to iCloud. In my experience, my iPhone 4S Siri now stays locked to my name, and my wife's stays locked to hers. You can easily check this by asking Siri, "Who am I?"

Hope this helps! Worked for me!

Same issue here but we have 4 phones... Mine, Wife's and two sons. All of a sudded Siri will call me by one of my boy's names. I fix it and then my boys complain saying Siri is using my name and the cycle goes on. I too thought of making just one contact on the Mac address book but that means I would need three macs to do that for each contact... too much of a pain and should really be fixed.

I honestly am surprised that this is not effecting more people?

Please let us know when this is fixed.

Not sure what you mean by needing "three macs to do that for each contact"; All you need to do is make an additional contact for each family member that would live ON THE MAC, not in iCloud, per my instructions above. Or, if your family is syncing to different macs, just make contacts for each person who uses that particular mac. Shouldn't be a big deal, and this is a one-time thing to do.

Although yes, I agree, they should make a login for Siri similar to logging in for iMessage or Find My Friends. Then we won't have this confusion.

EDIT:

Thanks Danny, figured it out, so far so good. Will report back in a few hours,

Cheers

all iDevices MUST have a unique apple ID for things to work properly. you can have MULTIPLE iCloud IDs on each device to solve these issues.

son1@me.com

son2@me.com

mom@me.com

dad@me.com

example iCloud iDs

put those in FIRST on each phone, THEN disable all the items you wish to SHARE typically calendar and contacts

then add the common apple id back in:

family@me.com (or likely dad@me.com) and for THAT second iCloud account on each device, flip on contacts and calendars.

then you can properly assign the Siri 'who am i' and it'll stop flipping back and forth. (also find my friends and imessage and facetime will all work).

'dad' in this example can just have one id. though it could be better to have 'family@me.com' for the shared ID, though pretty sure apple officially frowns on the most logical solution to their mess.

My possible fix.

I posted my amateur solution to another thread. My wife and I also share one account.

The last person to alter Siri My-Info will become the default iCloud user as well, but it will not affect the former's Siri My-Info.

So, both of you should log in to iCloud from the phone. ICloud and Siri will toggle and settle on the last of the two of you who logged in to iCloud. Then the subordinate person should change his/her Siri My-Info. Again iCloud will switch to that person in a few seconds. Then the dominant intended account holder (you) should change Siri My-Info to you. iCloud will then change back to you. The subordinate's My-Info will remain stable.

Let me know if this works. These are my own trial and error results, after Verizon and Apple were no help. So far so good after several hours.

(btw, you can watch all this happen in front of your eyes if you have icloud address book open or or mac address book (assuming synced). You can even experiment by assigning your Siri contact to random address book people).

Update: when you sync to itunes, subordinate Siri reverts back. So, pseudo-fix only. Sorry

Message was edited by: Seporad

Ok. I would like to amend my last post. While it may work, it is silly. I strongly endorse ANDREWWYNN's post above.

Make a new iCloud account for each phone/device. But only enable FINDMYPHONE for each of them +/- mail. Do not enable contacts, calendar, notes, etc.

Then go to add account, and you can add as many more iCloud accounts as you want. In my case, the universal family iCloud account (renamed "F-iCloud"), and enable everything you want to share.

As another poster may have said, photostream becomes account specific unfortunately. But everything else works perfectly.

Good luck.

Or just do what DannyTorrance said and you can also share photostream.

Ours has been working perfectly since i set it up as above.

DannyTorrance,

Thanks for your solution. We are having some of the same issues due to sharing an iCloud account. I have a couple of clarifying questions.

We use our shared iCloud account (former dot Mac, MobileMe, etc.) for iTunes purchases, calendars, contacts. My wife also uses it for her main email address.

In our iCloud address book we have the following entries:

Me - my cell phone number, my own iCloud account

Wife - only contains her cell phone number - no email or iCloud

Home - contains home phone number, our shared iCloud email address

If I am following your steps, should I create a contact for both me and my wife in address book to live only on the compute only (not in iCloud) in the 'Siri' group? I wasn't clear from the steps above if I do this only for me or both me and my wife.

I am also thinking I will have to add my wife's iCloud email to her contact info even though she doesn't receive email there. Basically it would be only for Siri.

Lastly, did you then remove your contact info from your shared iCloud address book, or is your contact info basically on the phone twice - once in iCloud and once for the 'Siri' address book.

Thanks in advance!

Siri uses the 'this is my card' function and most certainly does sync that concept to the cloud. e.g. if i make a special contact to 'call me' on the phone, but later set my 'this is me' card on my mac, the LAST choice stands.

that is an interesting workaround putting a separate group of contacts 'on my phone' through iTunes, that should actually work, good thinking. I don't usually recommend *any* form of syncing of contacts/emails/calendars through iTunes it makes a horrible mess of duplication. if you ONLY have a couple contacts 'on my iphone' for the different people that should work, the 'merge' step above will duplicate *all* your contacts and usually spells disaster.

a better solution would likely be:

1. disable cloud contact syncing, delete contacts from phone when it asks
2. go to contacts ON the PHONE and create the special 'for Siri' contact so you can assign THAT contact.

there is a preference in SIRI for which contact is YOU... if you assign it to an 'on my phone' contact which really needs nothign other than name and maybe phone#, though if you put in a spouse you can say things like 'call my wife' and it works properly, that should work marvelously well for sharing a SINGLE cloud-id, yet have different people names in siri, you will then share photostream as well.

if you DESIRE to share photostream and contacts it would be reasonable to share the same ID, but i still don't recommend it; documents also tied to the primary iCloud user.

The proper solution is to have separate iCloud primary user for the un-shared items and a SECOND iCloud user for the shared items. use the SHARED ID for the ID on the mac if you share a single login, or multiple-times if you wish to SHARE contacts/calendars on the mac. (mac user ID independent of the cloud id)

example... on the mac you can have husband, wife, daughter for logins and husband@me.comhusband@me.comhusband@me.com for the iCloud ID within each account.

iTunes is a disaster by default; dupicated in EACH account stoopidly rather than shared, but there are reasonable workarounds for that.

-awr

andrewwynn,

Would there be a third step in your explanation above to turn enable iCloud contacts after creating the 'on the phone' contacts? If so, won't you be presented with a "what shall I do with your existing contacts, merge or delete?" message?

Thanks again for everyone's assistance.

already in 'part one'.