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

Apple’s WWDC 2026 event kicked off yesterday at Apple Park, starting a week packed with reveals about Siri AI, iOS 27, Apple Intelligence, and more, along with developer events and demos as Apple looks to reassert itself with users and developers who haven’t been impressed with their releases within the wildly competitive AI space. It also marks CEO Tim Cook’s last WWCD with the company, after announcing he’s handing things off to Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering John Ternus on September 1.

Did they succeed? Keep tabs on this page, and the rest of our ongoing coverage, to find out!

TL;DR — Apple spent WWDC 2026 catching up

This is far from our consumer news editor Sarah Perez’s first WWDC, and with all that context in mind, she provides the subtext on much of what was being showcased.

For the past two years, Apple has been racing to catch up in AI while frustrations with its core software quietly added up: a design overhaul users hated, a search function that barely worked, a file-sharing feature that routinely failed, and a Health app that didn’t focus enough on half its user base. Apple didn’t say any of that on Monday. But the structure of its WWDC keynote said it for them, leading with fixes before features, and framing a better Siri as one item on a long list of improvements rather than the main event.

As expected, Apple made the case for an improved experience with its long-standing Siri assistant, which it admitted faces greater expectations from users in the age of AI. With Google Gemini under the hood, Apple claims that the new Siri updates will make it more capable, conversational, and compatible with visual intelligence, and it will be housed in a stand-alone app in addition to working across existing apps. You can get a full rundown of all the new Siri AI updates right here.

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

A potential foldable iPhone tease

No, Apple didn’t make such a big reveal during WWDC, but researcher @M1Astra dug through files within the iOS 27 developer beta and found references to things like “foldState,” “angleDegrees,” and other things that allude to the states a foldable device can be put into. And it’s not like there hasn’t been a bounty of foldable iPhone rumors over the past few years. Stay tuned for Apple’s annual iPhone event in September to see if we do get a formal reveal, unless Ternus really will be changing things up in the post-Cook era.

The next generation of Apple Intelligence

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

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

Liquid Glass gets some opt-in rollbacks

Everything else coming to iOS 27

As is the case every year, a number of small tweaks and updates arriving with the upcoming iOS update didn’t get their time in the sun during Apple’s broadcast, but that doesn’t mean they’re not noteworthy. Ivan Mehta brought together several of them right here, including:

- Full-screen homepage widgets.

- Separate volume controls for alarms, timers, alerts, and so on.

- Design tweaks for the weather app, with highlights on notable upcoming events.

Image Playground gets another chance