anybody else having this strange Siri issue?

I cannot say that I am experiencing this, but here are a couple of suggestions for you to try. Both of these options can be found under Settings, Accessibility, Siri.
1. Siri Pause Time: this setting determines how long Siri waits after you have finished speaking, to either respond to a query, or a command. Putting this on the lowest setting may help.
2. Show apps behind Siri: this is pretty self-explanatory. It allows your apps to remain displayed in the background, while you are interacting with Siri. Disabling this, will make Siri act like it did in its early days where it will have its own background, acting as an independent application, separate from anything else. This doesn't really change the way Siri works, it's just an aesthetic thing, however, it may help you with your issue.

I will not guarantee that either of these will help, but it is something to try at least.

HTH.

I sent Apple feedback about this issue while using the iOS 26.4 developer beta. Unfortunately it still exists in 26.5 so will send more feedback.

Siri doesn’t appear to be slow doing anything else. The issue only seems to be when opening apps.

This was an adjustment in order to make people who can see the screen easier to interact, if you’ll notice after it makes the dinging noise, and you ask another thing it will do it. The microphone is still listening for an extra like three seconds.

Hi,
Yes I've been experiencing this too and I find it rather annoying. But from my experience this doesn't happen all the time, but it still happens most of the time and yes, this only applies to when asking Siri to open an app.
For me it seems whether Siri would stick around after an app is launched appears to be quite random; I just tried just now to see if I could reproduce the issue and I can't seem to trigger the bug right now.

It's noticeably slower, isn't it? To be honest, I've given up with siri for launching apps as a result. I just use the braille screen input app launcher. Much quicker. I realise this solution's no good to you if you don't know braille or if you're not a Braille screen input fan; but it will do Bingo, perhaps for good.

I don’t think this is a bug. I think this is a new feature because of the ability that was added for serious for follow up questions. It’s made it a little bit different response time. A thing that I do think is an issue is any device that has a home button still which would be either the iPhone SE 2020 or the iPhone SE 2022 when you hold that down it’s a little bit slower to summon than it used to be. I don’t think we’re talking exactly about the same issue but that’s definitely something I’ve noticed. But on my iPhone 15, whether there isn’t the home button, the response time is normal for when you actually push the button to summon Siri. I had to turn off the hey Siri feature because it was literally triggering Siri when I watch a YouTube video and it said anything that sounded like the word like if it said anything serious or whatever it would hurt. So that was just weird. But yeah, I don’t think it’s actually an issue with a feature, but I could be wrong.

She is nuts. Do not think apple is doing anything with Siri, they are focussing on so call Siri 2.0. Will see how VO works with it. See same issues and she getting more stupid. LLC.

I think Siri has been pretty stupid for a long time. But it just kind of seemed like she’s getting stupider. Not lie. I love Siri but sometimes there’s questions that children just have a dumbest answer to. It’s OK though I think she will get better overtime.

How much is she getting at the moment? Or do you mean better over time? I am disinclined to pay Siri overtime at present.

Would love to say something but some will call it negative and will get an email from someone here. LLC.

I’m hoping that Siri will get better overtime. But yes that’s funny. But yeah I mean has been kind of stupid. I’ve even told that she’s stupid and all I get back is oh well that’s not nice and then I say back to her I don’t really care so yeah I guess we’ll just have to see what happens