Report: Siri for Mac will be one of OS X 10.12’s major new features

Apple’s Siri personal assistant will finally be coming to OS X 10.12 when the OS is released later this year, according to a report from 9to5Mac. According to the report, a Siri icon will live in the menu bar in the upper-right corner of the screen along with icons for Spotlight, the Notification Center, and other features. Users will also be able to use a keyboard shortcut to bring up Siri, which will be an optional feature that can be enabled during first-time setup or in System Preferences (much as it works in iOS today).

Microsoft’s Cortana feature made a similar jump from Windows Phone 8.1 to Windows 10 last year, and Google supports its “OK Google” voice commands in Chrome OS as well.

Since launching on the iPhone 4S in 2011, Siri has become a mainstay in most of Apple’s products; it spread to the iPad relatively quickly, it came to the Apple TV when it was refreshed last year, and it’s a primary input method for the Apple Watch. OS X already supports an optional Dictation feature for turning speech into text—in other words, the feature is a natural and long-awaited addition to the Mac platform.

Most Macs released since 2012 have included dual noise-canceling microphones, and it’s not clear whether Siri for Mac will require specific hardware to work. OS X 10.11 supports some Macs going all the way back to 2007, and unless the company drops support for a significant number of those older models, it may be the case that Siri won’t run on every single Mac that can run 10.12. We’ll undoubtedly find out more at WWDC, which typically happens in early June.