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.
Apple reveals Siri AI
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
If you are among those who aren’t exactly keen on last year’s Liquid Glass design updates, you aren’t alone. And while Apple isn’t switching to a new aesthetic, you will be able to dial back some of its elements, or really highlight them if you’re vibing with it. And for the app icon critics out there fresh from Spotify’s disco ball update, Apple showed off a new, layered approach to Liquid Glass within its apps.
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
The AI image-generating app Image Playground hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm, which depending on your view on AI slop may be a good thing. However, Apple rolled out a renewed pitch for users to actually start generating images, with a focus on its possible uses across many features of your devices, with an exclusion set on any training based on photos generated using the app. That, plus performance updates coming alongside Apple Intelligence upgrades, might at least take it out of the “suck” category for TechCrunch senior writer Amanda Silberling.
iOS 27 is stretching back to the iPhone 11
Claiming that its upcoming update will be “available to more users than any iOS release ever,” Apple revealed that all devices from the iPhone 11 onward will be eligible for their upcoming software update. And that update comes with a flurry of performance improvements it’s touting across a number of its OS releases this year, with Apple claiming that new photos will appear 70% more swiftly, AirDrop transfers will be 80% faster, and CPU schedulers will be improved to help multitasking.
New parental controls for iPhones
Apple spent a significant amount of the WWDC event showcasing a suite of tools for parents looking for greater control over what their children’s devices can and can’t do. Parents will be able to determine who their kid can call on the phone and what apps and websites they can access, with Apple making suggestions about how those restrictions can change over time. By default, though, its “Ask to Browse” feature limits access, and “Ask to Buy” for App Store and in-app purchases will be set as a default for devices set up for children younger than 13. You can get more parental control details right here.
Search gets an overhaul
Frustrated with searching through your iPhone for, well, pretty much anything? Search got a dedicated session during WWDC to tout a series of improvements, which you can learn more about here.
“We’ve all had that moment where you search for something you know is there, but it just won’t show up,” Stacey Ford, vice president of OS Program Management said. “So on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, we’ve rebuilt the foundation of search that powers Spotlight, Photos, and Mail.
Photos gets new AI editing tools
To take on popular AI photo-editing apps, Apple is bringing new AI features to its Photos app. A new spatial “Reframe” feature will let you use AI to adjust the perspective of an image as if you had repositioned the camera in the original scene. The new “Extend” tool expands images to adjust the aspect ratio or add more to a scene. The app’s popular “Cleanup” tool is also getting an upgrade so users can remove distractions with better quality and more realistic infill with generative AI.
Apple takes on AI dictation apps
Apple is launching a new systemwide dictation experience that’s built into the keyboard on iOS 27 and can correct spellings, punctuation, and capitalization. The update comes as AI dictation apps like Wispr Flow and Willow have been gaining popularity. These apps clean up filler words like “ums” and “ahs” and format the text after transcribing based on context.
Subscription bundles are headed to the App Store
For the first time, developers will be able to partner with each other to provide access to different subscriptions, for a lower bundled price. It’s not an uncommon practice for anyone who’s been pitched by various streaming services searching for subscriber growth, but it’s the first time this is available for things like productivity or photography apps in the App Store.
The App Store will start giving personalized recommendations
And if a bundled offer isn’t compelling enough, your interests and behavior will power a new means of discovery for developers: personalized recommendations that will appear across several App Store locations. These recommendations will include “App Notes” that detail why they’re appearing among other apps.
Shortcuts adds natural language creation
Apple is using AI to make its visual-scripting tool, Shortcuts, easier to use in iOS 27. The updated experience will allow users to write a prompt and simply describe what they want to do. The AI update makes the Shortcuts app more approachable and expands what non-technical people can do.
Health gets perimenopause insights
Apple’s Health app is adding perimenopause and menopause support to its existing cycle-tracking feature. The update embraces a topic that has gone mainstream, giving Apple a new product opportunity in a rapidly expanding market, as digital health tools targeting this demographic have attracted significant investment in recent years.
Tim Cook says farewell
At the end of the keynote, Tim Cook had a farewell message reflecting on his time as CEO:
Over the years, you have helped people connect, create, learn, and experience the world in extraordinary new ways, and with the incredible capabilities we introduce today, and so many more still to come, I truly believe the best is still ahead at Apple. Getting the best products in the world to deliver experiences that enrich people’s lives has always been our North Star. It’s been the honor of a lifetime to help advance that mission with teams whose creativity, care, and conviction continue to make a lasting difference in people’s lives.
Catch up on the rest of WWDC 2026’s reveals here
Miss out on WWDC? You can always catch up on the archive of the full event via the stream above or on Apple’s YouTube page right here.
