Sponsored by
THE USEFUL TECH
🔍 THE USEFUL FIND · MONDAY DISCOVERY · ISSUE #005
👋 HEY, IT'S RAJA
iOS 27 ships in about four weeks. The fourth public beta landed yesterday and almost nothing new turned up in it, which is Apple's way of telling you the feature list is now locked.
So this is a good moment to start pointing out the things you will want on day one. Today's is a button. It is hiding in the one part of Safari you look at most, and I did not find it for two weeks.
Stop googling AI tools at midnight.
There are over 3,000 of them in The Shift’s vault, already vetted, ready to explore.
Subscribe and get instant access to the tool vault, a 1000+ prompt library, and free AI courses built for people with actual work to do.
Plus, the daily newsletter that keeps you sharp on everything moving in AI in under 5 minutes a day.
They’re also giving away a free 1-year Claude Pro subscription to 3 subscribers.
Subscribe for free to enter. All free. All in one place.
🔍 The find: Ask Siri, in the Safari address bar
Ask a question about the page you are actually reading, without copying anything anywhere.
What it does
Open any article in Safari, and you can now ask Siri about it directly. Not a web search that happens to be related. A question about the specific page in front of you, answered with the page as context.
What makes it worth using rather than a novelty is that Siri combines the page with what it already knows. Cult of Mac tested it in their own article about the iOS 27 beta, asked when the update comes out, and got a correct answer that pulled the release timing together from both the page and general knowledge. That is a different thing from a summary button.
The practical version: you are three paragraphs into a dense review, and you want to know whether it covers battery life. Ask. You are looking at a recipe and want to halve it. Ask. You are on a documentation page and want the one command you came for. Ask.
How to find it
There are two routes, and the second is faster once you know it exists.
Tap and hold the address bar. A list appears, and Ask Siri sits at the bottom.
Tap the Page menu (the icon with three lines to the left of the address), and Ask Siri is at the very top.
I use the second one. The Page menu is where Reader and text size already live, so it is already in your muscle memory.
The catch
Two, and both matter.
This is Siri AI, which means it is not available in the European Union or China, and that will still be true when iOS 27 ships next month. If you are reading this from the EU, this particular find is not for you, and I am sorry to keep writing that sentence.
Second, it is beta software. Everything above is from the public beta, so the exact placement could shift before September. The feature itself is not going anywhere, but do ’t install a beta on your only phone just to try a button.
💡 Pro tip: the useful mental split is Siri for retrieval and Claude for thinking. Siri has the page, your photos, your mail, and your calendar. It is unbeatable at "what does this say" and "add that to Thursday." It is not the tool for "help me decide" or "write the reply." Knowing which one you are reaching for saves you being disappointed in both.
📱 Platform: iPhone, iPad
📍 Where: Safari → Page menu → Ask Siri
🧪 Requires: iOS 27 or iPadOS 27, currently in public beta
🌍 Not available: European Union, China
The other half of that split
The Ultimate Claude Playbook for Apple Users is the system I built around this exact division of labor: what stays with Apple's tools, what goes to Claude, and the workflows that connect the two without you having to think about it.
One button, and you will use it more than you expect. See you Wednesday, when I am handing three weekly jobs over to Claude and reporting back on what actually held up.
Keep it useful,
Raja · The Useful Tech
P.S. Enjoyed this? Forward it to a friend who loves their Apple gear a little too much.