Siri in iOS 27: Is Apple’s Chatbot Coming?

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Need-to-knows

• A standalone Siri app with conversation history is expected to arrive in iOS 27
• Siri may live in the Dynamic Island
• The upgrade is powered by Google’s Gemini AI, under a multi-year deal announced in January 2026
• Features originally promised for iOS 18 — personal context, on-screen awareness, cross-app actions — are expected to arrive

When Apple first showed off Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024, it played a video ad featuring actress Bella Ramsey asking Siri to do things that Siri, at the time, could not do. Find an email, understand context, take action across apps. The ad was pulled. The features were delayed. But, iOS 27 is where Apple is expected to finally make good on those original promises — and then some.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the new Siri will be revealed at WWDC 2026 look and work more like Claude or ChatGPT than anything Apple has shipped before. It’s the biggest rethink of Siri since the assistant launched in 2011. And it’s a much needed upgrade to a feature that has lagged behind competitors for far too long.

The standalone Siri app

The most visible change is expected to be a dedicated Siri app, which will appear on your iPhone like any other app. IF reports are to be believed, inside it you’ll find a scrollable list of past conversations, similar to what you see in ChatGPT or Claude, with options to favourite chats, search through your history, and attach images or files to new queries.

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Conversations may use a chat bubble interface, similar to iMessage, with an “Ask Siri” text field at the bottom and a microphone icon for switching to voice. Apple is also expected to let users set conversation history to expire, which is presumably how the company squares this feature with its robust privacy positioning.

This is a significant departure from how Siri has always worked. Right now, every Siri interaction is essentially disposable, there’s no thread, no memory of what you asked ten minutes ago and no contextual awareness. It is, compared to other providers, basically just a way to search Google with your voice. The new app changes that entirely.

Dynamic Island integration

Alongside the app, rumours suggest that Apple is redesigning how Siri appears across the rest of the system. When you activate Siri using the wake word or the side button, the Dynamic Island may now expand with a new animation. The Island could then end up expanding to a panel with a set of results.

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A new ‘Search to Ask’ feature is also swirling around the rumour mill. This is expected to effectively replace Spotlight search, but with considerably more capability and detail than you get now.

The Gemini deal

The engine underneath all of this is Google Gemini. In January 2026, Apple and Google announced a multi-year deal under which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models would be built on Gemini and cloud infrastructure. According to Gurman, the custom model is comparable to Gemini 3 in capability and therefore more powerful than anything Apple has built in-house.

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This is a notable shift. Apple has historically been reluctant to hand anything this central off to a third party and hints at just how far behind Apple is in terms of developing native LLMs.

The ChatGPT integration that arrived in iOS 18.2 isn’t likely to go away. Rumours are suggesting that, under a new “Extensions” system in iOS 27, users will be able to choose from multiple AI providers — Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT — through a dedicated section in Settings.

iOS 18 in iOS 27

Back at WWDC 2024, Apple promised three capabilities for Siri: personal context (reading your emails, messages, files, and photos to understand your life), on-screen awareness (understanding what’s currently on your screen and acting on it), and cross-app actions (completing tasks that span multiple apps). None of these made it into iOS 18 or iOS 26. All three are expected in iOS 27.

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Personal context means Siri will be able to do things like find the email your landlord sent last Tuesday, or know that “the document Sarah mentioned” refers to an attachment in your Messages app. On-screen awareness means you’ll be able to look at a restaurant in Safari and ask Siri to book a table without copying and pasting an address. Cross-app actions means instructions like “move the attachment from that email into my project folder” could actually work.

These features have been rumoured for a long time, but the Gemini deal suggest that, this time, we will see them realised.

Compatability

The new Siri experience is tied to Apple Intelligence, which requires the processing power of Apple’s A17 Pro chip or newer. That means the chatbot features are expected to be limited to iPhone 15 Pro and newer at launch, with full support across the iPhone 17 range.

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If you’re on an iPhone 15 or earlier non-Pro model, you’ll get iOS 27 but probably not the new Siri features.

When will it arrive?

Apple is expected to preview the new Siri at the WWDC 2026 keynote on 8th June. Developer betas should be available the same day. The full public release is likely to be in September 2026 alongside the iPhone 18 lineup, which is also when the iPhone Fold is expected to launch.