At WWDC 2026 in Cupertino, Apple announced iOS 27, the next mobile operating system for compatible iPhones. The update focuses on tweaking and improving last year's iOS 26, particularly in areas like app launch time, Liquid Glass design, and more. It does not offer a lot of major new features or upgrades, as Apple focused on polishing the experience. However, there are some new upgrades, such as reworked parental controls, new Siri AI, better search, and performance improvements.
Starting with Siri, it is now powered by Apple Intelligence with the help of Google's Gemini. It is now a standalone app where you browse and pin conversations, continue where you left off, and more. You can ask personal questions and get answers with personal context from emails, photos, messages, notes, and more. The updated Siri AI will be English-only at launch, but Apple promises to bring it to more languages and regions later (not available in the EU and China).
Apple Intelligence is also integrated into the Photos app, allowing you to use AI to clean up, extend, and reframe photos with the image context in mind. While most Siri AI features are free for use, Apple has made it clear that image-generation capabilities have daily limits, with higher limits for iCloud+ subscribers.
Another change in iOS 27 is the reworked parental control and screen time. Parents can set time allowances across different app categories, pause device use, allow websites and apps, select essential apps, set communication limits, and more.
Other changes in iOS 27 include improved Apple Maps with a significantly enhanced Flyover view for a much more realistic view. Apple also promises better performance, smarter search, new Health features, new parental controls, and more. For many users, the most important part is that iOS 27 is compatible with all iPhones that can run iOS 26. That means that even the seven-year-old iPhone 11 can run iOS 27 (supposedly better than iOS 26).
iOS 27 will be available this Fall, with the first developer betas expected later today.
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