Apple Adds Standalone Siri App in iOS 27
Get the Tech newsletter
Daily tech — startups, AI labs, chips, the launches that shape the next decade. Free.
- Apple announced iOS 27 at WWDC this week, headlined by a new standalone Siri app pre-installed on the iPhone Home Screen — the first time Siri has shipped as its own iPhone app.
- The new Siri app features a chat-style interface with a scrollable history of past conversations, accepts photo and file uploads for analysis, and syncs across Mac, Vision Pro, iPad, and Apple Watch via iCloud.
- The app ties into new Siri AI and Apple Intelligence features, including broad world knowledge, personal context drawn from messages, emails, and photos, and the ability to recognize and answer questions about on-screen content.
- Siri app compatibility is restricted to Apple Intelligence-capable devices — iPhone 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max, the iPhone 16 lineup, iPhone 17 lineup, iPhone 17e, and iPhone Air — excluding older or base-model iPhones.
- Apple has been steadily adding new default iPhone apps in recent updates: Image Playground shipped with iOS 18.2 in December 2024, and Preview and Games arrived with last year's iOS 26.
Why it matters: Apple is elevating Siri from a voice-button feature to a persistent app-level presence, treating the assistant as a core platform product. Gating the new app to Apple Intelligence-capable hardware effectively hard-splits the iPhone lineup into AI and non-AI tiers, with the iPhone 15 Pro or newer now the floor for the full Siri experience.
