Apple today share a statement saying that iPhone and iPad users will have to wait longer than expected to develop some of its planned Apple Intelligence features for Siri, and while the statement was somewhat vague, it indicated we may not see all of the capabilities until the release of iOS 19.
An Apple spokesperson said in a statement to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber:
“Siri helps our users find what they need and get things done quickly, and in just the past six months, we’ve made Siri more conversational, introduced new features like type to Siri and product knowledge, and added an integration with ChatGPT. We’ve also been working on a more personalized Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year.”
When we might see Siri’s AI features roll out is left up to interpretation due to Apple’s wording. “In the coming year” could mean sometime inn the next 12 months, or sometime in 2026. If Apple means the next 12 months, then we may see an enhanced Siri debut as an iOS 18 update. However, if they mean 2026, then we won’t see it happen until 2026. Either way, we have a bit of a wait ahead of us.
If Apple was on-track for an iOS 18 updated release of enhanced Siri, they might not have made an announcement at all, indicating that we may be holding our breath until iOS 19.
Gruber seems to have come to a similar conclusion:
Reading between the lines, and based on my PhD-level fluency in Cupertino-ese, what Apple is saying here is that these “more personalized Siri” features are being punted from this year’s OS cycle to next year’s: to iOS 19 and MacOS 16. Apple’s years in this context aren’t calendar years, but Apple’s OS product years. Those years effectively start at WWDC.
Since we’ll see the first public release of iOS 19 later this year, alongside the release of the new iPhones in September, we might not see the new features in the initial release of iOS 19 either. We could instead see them in an iOS 19.1, or iOS 19.2 release in early 2026.
The Siri features that haven’t made an appearance as yet include:
- Personal context, which will enable Siri to keep track of your emails, messages, files, photos, and more, to learn more about you to assist you in completing tasks and to keep track of what you’ve been sent.
- Onscreen awareness will allow Siri see what’s on your screen and complete actions involving whatever you’re looking at.
- Deeper app integration will allow Siri to do more in and across apps, performing actions and completing tasks that are not currently possible with the virtual personal assistant.
