Your hands are full, or wet, or you're driving, and it's easier to just ask than to find your phone, unlock it, and open an app. That's the whole case for Siri support in a medication reminder: the question is whether it actually works, or whether it's a settings toggle that answers "I don't understand" half the time.
Since iOS 16, Apple's App Intents framework lets an app register specific actions with Siri and Shortcuts — not open-ended conversation, but a fixed set of things you can say that map to something the app actually does. Whether that's useful for medications comes down entirely to which actions a given app bothered to register.
What a Siri-enabled medication app can actually do
Two different jobs, and they're not the same feature.
Reading: your schedule, what you're running low on, how consistent you've been, when you last took something. This is the safer half to get right, because a wrong answer is just annoying.
Writing: logging a dose, skipping one, adding stock after a refill, stopping reminders for something you no longer take. This is the half that matters more, because a Siri action that silently fails — or worse, silently succeeds on the wrong medication — isn't a UI bug anymore. It's you believing you took something you didn't.
If you're evaluating any app's Siri claim, that's the question worth asking: does it just read your data back to you, or does it let you act on it, and what happens when it mishears you?
Why every phrase has to include the app's name
This one surprises people the first time they hit it. You can't just say "log my metformin" — you have to say "log my metformin in [app name]."
That's not a design choice any one app makes; it's an Apple requirement. Every phrase an app registers through AppShortcutsProvider has to contain the app's name, or the build fails outright — the app name is literally how Siri knows which app's action you mean when dozens of apps could plausibly handle "log a dose." Free-form phrasing without naming the app only gets routed to apps that have registered a broader semantic domain with Apple, and medication tracking isn't one of the domains that exists for yet. So on any app, if a phrase doesn't include the app's name, it isn't going to work — that's worth knowing before you assume an app's Siri support is broken.
How this works in Doz
Doz registers nine Shortcuts, split across the two jobs above. Every phrase below is something you can say today, verbatim.
Ask:
- "What do I take today in Doz"
- "How am I doing in Doz" (your adherence streak)
- "What am I running low on in Doz"
- "When did I last take my metformin in Doz"
Tell it what happened:
- "Take my metformin in Doz"
- "Skip my metformin in Doz"
- "Take all my doses in Doz"
- "I refilled my metformin in Doz"
- "Stop reminders for metformin in Doz"
Asking is free. Logging, skipping, refilling, or archiving a medication by voice is part of Doz Pro — the same gate as the equivalent buttons on the widget and in notifications, so a spoken action can't silently do something a tap wouldn't have been allowed to do either.
No setup is required beyond having Doz installed on iOS 17 or later. Settings → Siri & Shortcuts inside the app lists every phrase above, plus a couple of natural variations for each, so you don't have to memorize the exact wording. From that same screen you can also turn any of them into a Shortcut, or add one to Spotlight for a one-tap version that skips talking altogether.
The short version
Siri support for medications is only as good as the specific actions an app registered — it's not general conversation. Every phrase has to name the app, by Apple's own requirement, not the app's. In Doz, reading your schedule, stock, streak, and last dose works for free; logging, skipping, refilling, and archiving by voice are Doz Pro, gated the same way the equivalent in-app buttons already are.
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