iPhones suggest people “check in” with their exes, bosses

Sometimes these suggestions are confusing: Why should I tell my sister that I’m home from work? And sometimes, they’re just plain awkward.

On Reddit’s r/iPhone board, someone said their phone recently suggested they check in with their ex — and this person couldn’t figure out why. Someone else followed up with a similar horror story: “Just happened to me too. We’ve been out of touch, she lives hundreds of miles away and we haven’t shared locations in months. I somehow accepted the check by mistake… in. I threw up lmao.”

On another device forum, someone reported: “I was using mine iPhone 13 Pro Max, and out of nowhere, Siri suggested I start a Check-in with my ex. The thing is we are currently out of touch and this has never happened with any of my other contacts.”

On Apple’s user support forums, people are similarly at a loss as to the logic behind who is suggested in Siri alerts for Check Ins. Also trying to figure out how to turn off suggestions.

“Did you ever get a fix for this? Mine just started and recommended that I share my location with my older boss and yeah I can’t see anything in any of the settings to turn it off,” he wrote . a forum poster.

Apple did not respond to questions from BI about what leads to a suggested contact for a record — or how to turn it off. And despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find a good answer on how to disable these records without disabling all Siri Suggestions in iOS18.

Most of the suggestions are actually quite reasonable: Siri suggests meeting a spouse or sibling.

Kylie Robison, a reporter for The Verge, noticed that she had received these prompts to check in with her mother when she got home after midnight. “My mom was not my emergency contact,” she told Business Insider. “I text him a lot, but probably not the most of any contact?” Robison is still confused as to why an adult who doesn’t live with her mom is getting prompts to text her mom at 1:30 a.m.

I’ve never gotten these check-in suggestions, but a friend told me that he gets a check-in suggestion with his friend Max when he’s biking by his apartment on his morning commute. But the suggestion isn’t mutual—Max told me he sometimes gets a suggestion to check in with his upstairs neighbor. (Neither Max nor John get the alert to check in with their wives.)

It doesn’t seem clear what triggers the recording suggestions. For most people, it’s someone they text quite often (or at least they have in the past). Other factors, such as whether you shared a location with someone or your phones were in physical proximity, can also send a signal to Siri.

It’s possible to turn off “Siri Suggestions” in both Messages and Maps, which could stop this feature. But this would also mean any other helpful Siri suggestions you want to be disabled. If Apple gets back to me with instructions on how to disable it, I’ll let you know!

And a tip: No matter what Siri tells you to do, DO NOT text your ex.