Recapping Apple's WWDC26 Keynote

Intro

Apple have just wrapped up the keynote presentation at WWDC 2026, Tim Cook's last such event as Apple's CEO. The focus this year across the board seems to be on two items: fixes and Apple Intelligence.

If you have read a few of my WWDC summary articles, you will know that I normally cover each operating system in its own section, mentioning where features are shared. I can't do that this year, because that's not how Apple presented things. Instead, we were given focus areas and new features, most of which span all of Apple's platforms. For instance, you can use the updated Siri on iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro, and you can expect fixes and polish on all those same systems. The presentation was light on new features unique to a single platform.

Therefore, the structure will be different. We're going to start off by talking about the star of the show: Siri and the related changes to Apple Intelligence. We will then move to the other two focus areas Apple highlighted during the presentation: reliability/responsiveness and safety.

Apple Intelligence Super Extra Plus

Apple Intelligence is nothing new. It's the blanket term used to discuss Apple's smart features--photo enhancements, Hold Assist, app suggestions, and a bunch of other features you may or may not use all the time. This year, it's getting supercharged.

The main change is Siri. The new Siri AI is, as you probably guessed, a version of Siri running on Apple Intelligence. This means Siri is aware of context, can see your screen, can try to understand what you mean to say, can be much more conversational, and can generally be more helpful--assuming it works as advertised. Here are some examples.

• If you have a calendar event on your screen, and you tell Siri to "move this to next Friday at 3", it will do that.
• You can use natural language to make new calendar events. We've been promised this before, but maybe it'll work this time.
• You can start an email to someone, then ask Siri to draft the message about a specific topic. Not only will Siri do it, but it will do so in the style you usually use when you email this person.
• You can use natural language to create shortcuts in the Shortcuts app, or generate a Safari extension.
• If you are in a text conversation with someone and go to add some photos, Siri will suggest photos of that person and/or photos related to the discussion.

You get the idea. Siri AI uses context to figure out what you want to do, it can draft messages and documents, it can proof-read your typing, it can find relevant results to a question and them include them in drafts. It can even manipulate things on the screen (such as editing a calendar event), though we don't know the extent of that ability. But that's not all.

Apple Intelligence now has access to better models than ever. This not only increases Siri's intelligence (kind of), but it gives it a new set of voices. Apple has claimed "better" Siri voices multiple times in the past, and I've never found the improvements to be all that impressive. Based on today's demos, the new voices are AI ones, a little like you'd find with Eleven Labs or similar companies. They sound good, but are clearly AI voices, with the odd pauses and inflections we all know and love.

You can customize them, at least. There are two voice sliders, one for expressiveness, and one for pace. As a constant user of TTS voices, I found it a bit odd that Apple used the word "pace" instead of "rate". Only the betas will tell us just how much these new voices can be sped up. Perhaps Apple will finally let us use VoiceOver voices with Siri as part of the update? That would be nice. A natural sound is good, but screen reader users with decades of fast speech experience often want quick responses over pleasant-sounding ones. Or maybe that's just me.

Speaking of things blind and visually impaired users might like, wouldn't it be cool if Siri could tell you about what your camera is seeing? Now it can. Siri is officially multi-modal now, and one of its new modes is visual. Give it a picture or a shot from your phone's camera and ask questions. The presenter explained how he could ask Siri to identify where in California a picture depicted by having it use landmarks, but my mind went where, I'm sure, most of ours did. Can we use this to replace Be My AI? (Sorry, Be My Eyes, we still love you!) Could I point my phone at a box, ask Siri what it is, then have it add more of the item to my Uber Eats cart? No one knows for sure, but it seems possible.

If you want to go back to a conversation, or continue work on one device that you started on another, use the new Siri app. Here, you can see your past interactions from any device, jump back into a conversation, and generally manage your Siri experience. Syncing is handled (and protected) by iCloud.

We've talked about Siri a lot. What about Apple Intelligence as a whole? The other major improvement Apple highlighted was dictation. They have said in the past that dictation has gotten a lot better, but when they said it this year, they backed it up by pointing out that dictation is now backed by the new models I mentioned earlier. Apple worked with Google and others to come up with AI models that are more powerful and capable than anything ever used in an Apple product, and one benefit is, in theory, vastly improved dictation. Capitalization, punctuation, and overall word choice should all see big leaps forward.

Apple Intelligence can do more than dictation, though. It can do things like notice you are calling an airline, and show you the confirmation code it found in your email. Or, if you want to change a website password, an AI agent can do that in the background for you.

I should mention, if briefly, that photography got a shout-out in this AI discussion. Something about adjusting the angle of a shot, giving the subject more space, and AI-based re-creation of parts of an image as needed. The three areas Apple mentioned were an improved version of the existing Cleanup tool, a new tool called Extend, and another new tool called Spatial Reframe. I won't claim to understand what they do or how they are better, but you, reader, likely care not a bit about this stuff anyway.

How does all this work, though? No iPhone can run massive models locally, right? Some things do happen locally. In fact, the only iPhones capable of running all the latest models for which iOS has local support are the iPhone 17 Pro/Pro Max and iPhone Air, because of their extra RAM. For larger models, and for older devices, Apple's existing private cloud compute is the answer. Your request is run remotely, but on secure, privacy-centric servers Apple built specifically to not track users.

Because some of these features are very compute-intensive, there are limits. Take, for instance, the new image creation tools in Image Playground, which can now do photo-realistic work. Users are limited to a set number of those per day, with that number increasing for those on some paid iCloud plans. We don't yet have the details on what will and won't be limited.

I should also add that there are restrictions. There's a waitlist, but Apple says the beta is coming later this year. The bigger problems are that this is only available in English for now, and isn't supported in the EU or China. Apple says that regulatory issues currently stop them from releasing Siri AI in those areas, but that they are working on the problem. I'm not quite clear on if this is Siri AI, some of the new Apple Intelligence features, or both.

Reliability

Another focus area this year is general reliability and responsiveness. Every so often, Apple will take an upgrade cycle and focus on refining what they have instead of a bunch of new features. While this isn't a flashy presentation where they can show off their new shinies, it is a much-appreciated effort that improves what all of us users already have.

I'm sure there will be a lot of changes and fixes most of us never even notice--we'll just have a slightly smoother overall experience, never knowing how many background glitches are not happening anymore. However, Apple did share several concrete things we can look forward to.

On iPhone (and maybe iPad?), several areas have been sped up. Apps launch up to 30% faster, and AirDrop is up to 80% faster. Apple even said that transferring files to an external drive could be up to five times quicker than in iOS 26.

In terms of efficiency, Apple have made a new CPU scheduler. This is the low-level program that figures out when each of the myriad tiny tasks iOS is constantly performing should run. The new scheduler in iOS 27 makes the whole system run better, and while it works best on the newest devices, it will be included all the way back to iPhone 11.

Other examples include iOS doing a better job of switching between Wi-Fi and cellular, not lagging when sending large attachments in the Messages app, loading images in the Photos app faster, and running system animations more smoothly.

Some people have been calling 2026 another Snow Leopard year, referring to OS X Snow Leopard's lack of features but increased usability and quality-of-life improvements. After today's presentation, I agree. AI was a large part of the show, but polish was definitely a major focus item as well. I appreciate this, personally.

New Features

Yes, the bulk of today was all about AI and small changes to the software we already have. Still, that's not to say that no new features are coming. Here are some. These are taken from both the actual presentation and Apple's releases about the upcoming software updates.

Safari on iPhone, iPad, and Mac has some new abilities backed by Apple Intelligence. First, Safari will notice when you've opened several tabs related to the same thing, such as multiple trip websites or product reviews. It will let you close all of them at once when you are done with the topic, or keep them together by moving them all to a new tab group.

Safari can also watch webpages in the background. Go to a page, tell Siri what you want (tell me when the price changes, tell me when the event is live), and close the page. When the thing happens that you told Siri to watch for, you will be notified.

All the Apple products that support Spotlight will get a new search/index core. Spotlight should be faster and serve more relevant results now. For instance, searching for an email will return messages that have more to do with your search, rather than tending to prefer newer messages that aren't really what you're looking for.

macOS 27 (Golden Gate) has a slightly new look. Icons are more consistent, there is a slider to fully control how transparent Liquid Glass is, and toolbars and sidebars look better. Siri is integrated into Spotlight, and has features powered by Apple Intelligence. For instance, you can select two documents, right click, and type a question to Siri about the documents. Note that the Siri box is a new option in the context menu, not a replacement for the menu.

In iOS, some of the new features include:

• AirPods now offer a custom EQ
• Split a bill using Apple Intelligence and Apple Pay
• Import passes into Wallet using your camera or by typing the details manually
• Shared photo albums now works with Android devices
• The Health app's fertility tracking now has support for menopause and perimenopause
• Apple Home supports 4K cameras and uses Apple Intelligence to find objects in camera clips and create automatic live events

Safety

The third area Apple talked about was safety, particularly child safety. There have long been parental controls, screen time limits, and more for parents to control what their children can do, but those tools are being expanded in the upcoming updates.

• Content in messages and other apps that might be objectionable, such as nudity or violence, will be automatically blurred when a child's device views it. The parent will also be alerted about the incident.
• Websites can now be blocked. Adult sites are automatically blocked, but parents can extend the ban to any other websites they want to.
• Screen time limits have been enhanced with categories. A parent can, for instance, allow more screen time for reading, but none for gaming.
• Parents are notified when a child adds a new contact.
• Parents can use the new schedule feature to change allowed screen times for school days versus weekends, for example, or modify which apps are blocked when.
• All parental restrictions are created based on research and input from the American Association of Pediatrics and will be modified to stay in line with the latest guidelines.
• Apps have access to restrictions so they can adjust themselves to be age-appropriate. There are a lot of dev tools around parental restrictions that apps can support.

Who and When?

The developer betas are already out. As usual, Apple will release the public betas in July, and the final release this fall. If your devices run version 26, they will get version 27--mostly. Apparently, Apple Watch Series 8 and earlier, Apple Watch Ultra 1, and Apple Watch SE 2 and earlier will miss out. The two oldest Apple TV models also will not get version 27 Remember that not every device will get every feature. It's still not entirely clear if, for instance, an iPhone 13 will offer full Apple Intelligence but offload more requests to the cloud, or if it will simply not support everything a newer iPhone does.

Until Next Time

This year didn't give us a lot of new features or big changes, though Siri AI and the other Apple Intelligence improvements have a huge impact across all of Apple's products. The focus on overall reliability is certainly welcome--I hope this extends to VoiceOver. The new parental controls don't impact me personally, but I'm sure we're all in favor of anything that keeps kids safer and helps them not grow up addicted to screens.

Were you underwhelmed by the WWDC26 Keynote, or do you appreciate Apple making what we already have smarter and more solid? What didn't you get that you were hoping to? Are you excited for Apple Intelligence, or are you, like me, thinking about how many times Apple has promised AI-powered improvements that never seemed to materialize? Do you trust Apple to do AI right, or are you going to turn off all the smarts you can once you upgrade?