CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple began rolling out iOS 27 to compatible iPhones on Monday, delivering the long-delayed overhaul of Siri that the company first promised more than two years ago, alongside companion updates to watchOS, iPadOS and visionOS that extend the same artificial intelligence push across Apple’s broader device lineup.
The update arrives just ahead of this week’s release of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, and marks the first major software launch under Apple’s new chief executive, John Ternus, who formally took over from Tim Cook on September 1. Cook, who led Apple for just over 15 years, has moved into the role of executive chairman of the company’s board.
The headline feature across all four operating systems is Siri AI, a rebuilt version of Apple’s voice assistant that the company first announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference in 2024 before delaying the release in early 2025. Built using Apple’s own foundation models developed in collaboration with Google’s Gemini technology, Siri AI is designed to hold actual conversations rather than respond to isolated commands, allowing users to ask natural follow-up questions without needing to rephrase earlier requests. The new assistant draws on a person’s own device data, including text messages, emails and calendar appointments, to answer more specific questions, such as locating an address buried in a group chat or pulling up a recipe shared over email months earlier.
Siri AI is being released as a beta, and Apple says users must opt in through the Settings app, with some users required to join a waitlist before gaining access. The assistant is initially available in English only, with support for French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish expected to follow in October. Apple CEO John Ternus described the new assistant’s approach to personalization at the company’s iPhone launch event earlier this month. “It’s personal intelligence that’s actually personal,” Ternus said.
Behind the scenes, Apple has introduced what it calls a System Orchestrator, a new architecture that ties together the different components of Apple Intelligence, from image processing to text generation, into a single unified system rather than a collection of separate features. The updated Siri also gains a new visual identity built around Apple’s Liquid Glass design language, now extending into the iPhone’s Dynamic Island, along with both voice and text entry options and a dedicated Siri app that stores a user’s previous conversations and syncs that history privately across their Apple devices through iCloud.
Not every user will get the same experience on day one. While iOS 27 itself is available as a free update for the iPhone 11 and iPhone SE second generation and later, Apple has tied the deepest version of Siri AI’s capabilities to devices running an A17 Pro chip or newer, meaning the fuller experience will initially be reserved for iPhone 15 Pro models and later, including this week’s new iPhone 18 Pro lineup. That hardware split effectively divides Apple’s installed base into three tiers: phones that receive iOS 27 without the new Siri, phones that get a baseline version of Siri AI, and newer phones built to handle the assistant’s full capabilities.
Apple also disclosed that some Siri AI and broader Apple Intelligence features relying on the company’s cloud servers will be subject to daily usage limits. “Daily limits may vary by feature, request complexity, system demand, system policies, and other factors,” the company said in materials accompanying the release, adding that expanded usage limits would “be available for a fee in the future.”
Beyond Siri, iOS 27 extends generative AI tools deeper into Apple’s built-in apps. Photos gains a Spatial Reframing tool for adjusting image composition, an Extend feature that uses generative fill to expand an image’s borders, and an improved Clean Up tool for removing background distractions. Safari now offers AI-assisted page summaries alongside general speed improvements, while Safari’s Notify Me feature can monitor a product page and alert users to price changes or restocks. Mail, Calendar, Home and Shortcuts all gain smarter suggestions and lighter automation, including the ability for Shortcuts to build multi-app automations from a single written instruction rather than requiring each action to be added manually.
The release also brings a new Liquid Glass opacity slider that lets users choose between a clearer or more frosted interface, updated icon designs with subtle color tweaks across built-in apps, extra-large widgets, and separate volume controls for ringtones, alarms, timers and system alerts. Apple said the update includes more than 250 changes across the operating system in total, along with new child safety controls and broader performance improvements aimed at system responsiveness.
Companion updates rolled out alongside iOS 27 extend similar capabilities across Apple’s other devices. WatchOS 27 introduces new Workout Buddy features, a new tap gesture, additional Liquid Glass refinements, updated Smart Stack suggestions and an improved Find My app, while also speeding up file transfers to external drives and browsing performance on iPad, along with smoother connectivity when switching between Wi-Fi and cellular data. VisionOS 27 brings the Siri AI overhaul to Apple Vision Pro users as well, alongside the ability to preview notifications using eye tracking, updates to the headset’s Control Center, improved Wi-Fi connectivity, and support for turning previously captured panoramic photos into immersive scenes.
The release follows a beta cycle that began at Apple’s developer conference in June and ran through eight separate developer and public test builds before Monday’s public rollout. For Ternus, who spent more than two decades in Apple’s hardware engineering organization before becoming CEO, the release represents an early test of how the company under his leadership will manage its long-running effort to catch up in generative AI, an area where Apple has faced sustained competitive pressure from rivals including OpenAI and Anthropic.
