WWDC 2026: Everything announced on Siri AI, iOS 27, Apple Intelligence, and more

Apple’s WWDC 2026 event kicked off this morning at 10 a.m. PT at Apple Park, kicking off a week full of anticipated announcements about Siri, iOS 27, Apple Intelligence, and more, along with developer events and demos. This year’s event is particularly notable for several things. This marks CEO Tim Cook’s last meeting with the company, after he announced that he would hand things over to senior vice president of hardware engineering John Ternos on September 1. It’s expected to host Apple’s attempt to give Siri and its AI efforts in general a big boost after handing some work to Google and delaying some releases.

Do they succeed? Follow this page and the rest of our ongoing coverage to find out!

Apple unveils Siri AI

As expected, Apple called for an improved experience with its longtime assistant Siri, which it admitted faces greater expectations from users in the age of artificial intelligence. With Google Gemini under the hood, Apple claims that new Siri updates will make it more conversational and visually intelligent compatible, and will be housed in a standalone app as well as working across existing apps. You can get a full summary of all the new Siri AI updates here.

Before rolling out improvements and features, Apple was adamant about its privacy-focused approach to AI. “We believe privacy in AI is non-negotiable,” Apple Vice President Craig Federighi said during the stream, going so far as to say that “the data is only used to fulfill your request, and outside experts can continue to verify this promise at any time.”

The next generation of Apple intelligence

To go along with the new Siri AI overhaul, the tech giant has announced a slew of new Apple Intelligence updates across its apps, including tab management for Safari, one-click password refresh, cross-app context awareness, and more. Additionally, the Messages app gets AI-powered reply suggestions, while the Phone app can now pull context from other apps like Mail and Messages mid-call.

Apple said it has collaborated with Google and the Gemini family of models to develop the next generation of Apple Foundation models that support integrated Apple Intelligence experiences.

Liquid Glass is getting some subscription pushback

If you’re among those who weren’t exactly keen on Liquid Glass’ design updates last year, you’re not alone. And while Apple isn’t switching to a new aesthetic, you’ll be able to bring back some of its elements, or really highlight them if you rock it. And for the app icon critics who recently emerged from Spotify’s disco ball update, Apple has demonstrated a new, layered approach to Liquid Glass within its apps.

Image Playground gets another chance

The AI ​​creation app hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm, which might be a good thing depending on your point of view, but Apple has rolled out a revamped offering for users to actually start creating photos, focusing on potential uses across many of your devices’ features, while making an exception for any practice based on photos created with the app. This, combined with the performance updates that come along with Apple Intelligence upgrades, might at least take it out of our senior writer Amanda Silberling’s “suck” category.

iOS 27 extends to iPhone 11

Claiming that the upcoming update will be “available to more users than any iOS release ever”, Apple revealed that all devices from iPhone 11 onwards will be eligible for the upcoming software update. This update comes with a series of performance improvements it has been touting across a number of its operating system releases this year, with Apple claiming that new photos will appear 70 percent faster, AirDrop transfers will be 80 percent faster and CPU scheduling will be improved to aid in multitasking.

New parental controls for iPhone

Apple spent much of its WWDC event showing off a range of tools for parents looking for greater control over what their kids’ devices can and can’t do. Parents will be able to limit who their children can contact via phone, and what apps and websites they can access, with Apple offering suggestions on how these restrictions can change over time. By default, Ask to Browse, which limits access, and Ask to Buy for the App Store and in-app purchases will be set as the default for devices set up for children under 13. You can get more parental control details here.

Search gets a complete overhaul

Frustrated with searching your iPhone for…well…almost anything? Search got a dedicated session during WWDC to promote a series of improvements, which you can learn more about here.

“We’ve all had that moment when you’re looking for something you know is there, but it won’t show up,” said Stacy Ford, vice president of operating system program management. “So, in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, we’ve rebuilt the search foundation that powers Spotlight, Photos, and Mail.

To compete with popular AI-powered photo editing apps, Apple is bringing new AI features to its Photos app. A new spatial “reframe” feature will allow users to use AI to adjust the perspective of an image as if they had repositioned the camera in the original scene. The new “Expand” tool expands images, adjusts the image’s aspect ratio, or adds more to the scene. The app’s popular ‘clean’ tool is also getting an upgrade so users can remove distractions with better quality and more realistic fill using generative AI.

Catch the rest of WWDC 2026 reveals here

Are you missing WWDC? You can always catch an archive of the full event via the stream above or on Apple’s YouTube page here.