iOS 26 will add three big Siri upgrades, here’s what’s new

Siri has been in a state of disarray, but things are starting to improve. Apple’s assistant has new leadership implementing serious changes, and reporting indicates we will start benefiting from big Siri upgrades this fall in iOS 26. Here’s what to expect.

#1: Personalized Siri assistance in iOS 26

One of iOS 26’s potential Siri advantages over AI competition is knowledge about you and your personalized data.

Since Siri is part of Apple’s ecosystem, it can tap into your other Apple data in a privacy-sensitive way. In iOS 26, this will enable it to provide assistance that’s personalized to your life.

Apple gives two powerful examples:

• a user can say, “Play that podcast that Jamie recommended,” and Siri will locate and play the episode, without the user having to remember whether it was mentioned in a text or an email
• they could ask, “When is Mom’s flight landing?” and Siri will find the flight details and cross-reference them with real-time flight tracking to give an arrival time

There’s huge potential for Siri’s usefulness to grow like never before in iOS 26 with these new abilities.

#2: Actual hands-free computing with Siri

For years now, it’s felt like Siri’s list of supported actions has been pretty stagnant. The assistant’s fine for basic tasks like setting timers, reminders, or playing music, but actual hands-free computing is mostly still a pipe dream.

Things will change in a big way with iOS 26 though, since it introduces hundreds of new actions—including multi-app requests.

Siri’s ability to do a lot more things is great. But the multi-app feature sounds especially compelling.

For example, you’ll be able to say something like, “Add the photos from this morning to my Birding note,” and Siri will take care of it. No need to open the Photos app or Notes, just say the words and it’s done.

#3: Onscreen awareness

Many years ago, Siri added support for a very limited form of onscreen-related functionality. For example, today in iOS 18 you can say, “Remind me about this” when viewing an email, and Siri will create a reminder with a link to the message.

But true onscreen awareness has never been in Siri’s wheelhouse—not until iOS 26.

When Siri’s new upgrades arrive, it will gain awareness of specific content on your screen, letting you reference it naturally like you would to a human assistant.

Apple explains:

With onscreen awareness, Siri will be able to understand and take action with users’ content in more apps over time. For example, if a friend texts a user their new address in Messages, the receiver can say, “Add this address to his contact card.”

This should come in handy on the iPhone, but it could prove especially vital on Vision Pro when the capability arrives there.

Siri’s iOS 26 upgrades: wrap-up

It’s become abundantly clear that Apple should never have announced the three features above at WWDC last year. They weren’t anywhere near ready.

But with Siri’s new leadership, it sounds like the upgrades will at last debut this fall with iOS 26. If Apple can deliver on these features’ huge potential, Siri should feel drastically more intelligent than it’s ever been.

Which iOS 26 Siri feature are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments.

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