Since its inception, Siri has remained an ephemeral assistant. It comes and goes when summoned, and iPhone users never actually see it. Although the iPhone’s screen lights up to signal that it’s listening, and it sometimes speaks out loud when responding or delivering results, there’s never been an actual Siri app. But as PCMag reports, that’s about to change.
The new Siri and revamped Apple Intelligence are the core upgrades Apple is bringing to iOS, iPadOS, and macOS later this year, impacting hundreds of millions of devices. At WWDC last week, Apple showed everyone how the company rearchitected Siri and viewing numerous demonstrations of what it can do—and it could have a significant impact on how people use their iPhones.
For example, according to PCMag, the Siri app lets you field more complex queries, view more detailed results, and take action on them. In a demo at Apple HQ, a company representative asked Siri on the iPhone about meteor showers. Siri recommended waiting for the Perseids in August, and the Apple rep then used Siri to create an action plan for viewing the show at a nearby park. It was great to see the conversation flow from iPhone to iPad to Mac—and persist after closing the app.
More Than Just a Revamped Siri
AI-based mobile chatbots have been available on the iPhone for several years now. You can easily find ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others on the App Store. Many are free to use and do a fine job of assisting with queries and helping formulate plans. (The Siri that’s available today has access to ChatGPT if you want richer results.)
But iPhone owners have to proactively seek them out. They aren’t preinstalled on the iPhone, unlike many Android phones from Google, Motorola, and Samsung, which often include Gemini by default. This is a key distinction. Gemini often feels like a natural extension of the Google-centric experience on Android phones. Today’s iPhone chatbots don’t. More importantly, not every iPhone user has taken the effort to install one. Pew Research suggests between 40% and 48% of iPhone users have one installed.
Of course, Apple doesn’t really want us to call Siri a chatbot. “We see Siri not as a separate chatbot, [not as] just an unintegrated place you go and chit-chat, but rather as an integral, conversational tool that you use in the moment, deeply integrated into your experience,” said Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, during a Tech Talk at WWDC. For now, Apple is still referring to the Siri app as just Siri.
And an app was inevitable. “The most natural affordance for any user to go find something…is to have an app that they can manage on their home screen, launch, and get back to. And so we have a Siri app, and that Siri app just re-embodies those capabilities of that core system experience,” said Federighi.
A Reimagined, Integrated Companion
The Siri AI app runs on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It syncs between the three platforms, so your queries and conversations are available no matter which device you’re using. The early developer build I saw somewhat resembles Gemini’s basic framework, especially on the desktop, though Apple’s design cues give it that distinctive Apple-y look. Your past queries appear in a sidebar on the left, and the current conversation is displayed in a larger panel on the right.
According to PCMag, when Apple pushes iOS 27 to iPhones later this fall, those with newer devices (iPhone 15 Pro and up, and iPads and Macs with M1 and up) will have direct and easy access to this new functionality for the first time at the OS level. Seeing results on screen, having a Siri app to open and close, and scrolling through an ongoing list of your queries will be a brand new experience for many iPhone users. It might even be the first direct exposure to AI-based tools for some.
Certainly, that will feel like a tectonic shift, especially given the care and thought Apple has put into the app’s features and performance. Like it or not, the Siri app will be a turning point for iPhone users—a change of direction that, perhaps, points to a more informed and well-planned future.
At this point, we’ve only seen a few small glimpses of what Siri AI can do in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS Golden Gate on early developer builds across the three platforms. PCMag has yet to put Siri through its paces, which we will do in full when it is released to the public later this year.
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