iOS 27

Most of what has been written about iOS 27 describes Siri AI. These are the iOS 27 tips that are easy to miss. Settings buried two panes deep, a gesture Apple removed quietly, and features with a catch worth knowing first.

Every tip here is new in iOS 27 release, and comes from my own testing rather than from Apple’s feature list.

1. Where Siri went

You can bring up Siri (by default), as in previous releases, by saying “Siri” or “Hey Siri,” or by pressing and holding the side button. However, the change introduced in iOS 26 that let you double-tap the bottom of the screen is gone. In iOS 27, you can swipe down on a Home screen to reveal the new combination of Spotlight and Siri: a field labeled Search or Ask. You can type into that field, or tap the Dictation icon and talk to Siri that way.

2. Set the Liquid Glass level

When you upgrade to iOS 27 or iPadOS 27, the last stages of the installation present a new screen that lets you choose to adjust Liquid Glass using a slider. If you don’t make the adjustment at that moment, you can do so later, or change your initial choice. Go to Settings > Appearance > Liquid Glass.

This new screen offers a slider you can drag from the left edge, which Apple describes as “More Clear” (most Liquid Glass effect) across a range to the right: “More Tinted” (most opaque). Apple makes it easy to visualize by providing a scrollable preview that shows Liquid Glass elements overlaid on a webpage with images and text.

3. Flatten Liquid Glass completely

Go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size and enable Reduce Transparency. This flattens Liquid Glass, removing transparency and providing an almost identical look to iOS 18/iPadOS 18. The level of Liquid Glass you have enabled doesn’t have an effect.

Use Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Increase Contrast to bump up the difference in tones. In iOS 27/iPadOS 27, the difference appears slight, where it was sharply distinct in the previous releases.

4. Why the slider is locked

You can’t change the Liquid Glass intensity when either of those two options is enabled. When you attempt to change the Liquid Glass setting, you’re told that Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast must be disabled. You can tap Turn Off.

5. Give alarms their own volume

It took this long for Apple to let you set the volume of alarms and timers hitting zero seconds separately from your ringtone volume. Go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics and, under Alarms and Timers, disable Match Ringtone Volume.

6. Stop clinging to dead Wi-Fi

In iOS 27, Apple rebranded the Wi-Fi Assist feature as Connectivity Assist, and if you had Wi-Fi Assist enabled—it was by default—you’ll find the new feature already turned on in Settings > Wi-Fi.

7. Use both FaceTime cameras

After many, many years of FaceTime supporting a single camera view on iPhone, you can now use the front and back cameras simultaneously. The proviso? You need an iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, or iPhone Air and iOS 27. The other person or people can see your dual-camera feed only if they have iOS 27, iPadOS 27, or macOS 27. (This builds off the dual-capture mode in the Camera app on those models introduced in iOS 26.)

To use the dual-camera mode, in an active FaceTime session (or before someone has joined), tap the Flip Camera button in the inset selfie view. This shows both cameras by default.

8. Share location for any period

Previously, you could share your location for an hour, until the end of the day, or indefinitely. Now you can set a custom period of time.

9. Hide your location silently

If you’re sharing your location with someone, you can hide your location from your end until the next morning (at 4 a.m.), and they’re not notified. They’re also not told when you resume sharing, or “unhide” your location. They simply see you with a “location unavailable” label.

10. Photo keywords, at last

It took many years, but you can finally apply keywords to media in the Photos app on an iPhone and iPad. Huzzah? (Keywords are a useful way to link images for searching and organization.) However, you can still only apply keywords to items one at a time, as opposed to singly or in selections of two or more on a Mac. To add keywords, tap the info button, then tap Add Keywords.

11. See only what you selected

When you make a selection by tapping the Select button in the upper-right corner of any multiple-item view in Photos, a new Show Selected button appears at the bottom. Tap it, and it reveals just the items you chose. You can adjust the selection or view the images and videos in a carousel. Tap Deselect All to remove the current selection.

12. Two albums appear by themselves

Apple adds two new albums in Collections > Utilities. Captured by Me contains images or videos you created using any iPhone or iPad, such as via the Camera app or by taking a screenshot. The Identity Documents album uses machine learning (not Apple Intelligence) to collect scans or photos of personally identifying documents. (Identity Documents hasn’t yet appeared for me in iOS.)

13. Upgrade a Shared Album first

In iOS 27/iPadOS 27 (and on macOS 27 and at iCloud.com), you have access to several new features. However, you must first upgrade an album: select the album in Collections > Shared Albums, tap the More button, then tap Upgrade Shared Album. This may take some time—minutes or longer—depending on the size of the items in the library and your internet connection.

After upgrading, you have access to the following:

• Full-resolution photos and videos are now supported across all common formats.
• You can filter by photos or videos. Tap the Filter button, then tap Media Types.
• There’s a Create Shared Album option for any existing album. Tap the More button, then tap Create Shared Album.
• Albums can be set to expire after 30 days, but only when created. After creating a Shared Album from an existing album or by tapping the Add button in the Collections > Shared Albums view, enable Make Album Temporary.
• You can create an upload link that allows anyone—not just people with access to the album—to upload images. With the album selected, tap the Share button, tap “Only invited people can join,” and choose Anyone with the Link. (This is similar to other kinds of sharing across iOS 27/iPadOS 27.)
• A recent activity log lets you see changes made to the album, including emoji reactions. (This doesn’t yet appear to be in place.)

14. Save a video still

You can extract a frame from a paused video to save as an image. Tap the More button and choose Save Video Frame.

15. Make Photos sync now

Photos often decides to pause syncing to iCloud to avoid draining the battery, even when the battery is quite full. You can now go to Settings > Apps > Photos > Sync Immediately and choose For Today. This prioritizes syncing instead of preserving battery life for the remainder of the calendar day. If Low Power Mode or Low Data Mode are enabled, Photos will still pause until those modes are turned off, such as by recharging the phone for the former.

16. Slideshows without Memories

Slideshows can now be built from any album or even a selection of media, rather than relying on memories.

17. Search a podcast’s episode notes

If you navigate to a podcast’s view of all of its episodes by tapping the podcast and then tapping Episodes, you can now search against the title and show notes of all listed episodes.

This doesn’t search transcripts, which Podcasts generates for some shows. It searches only the per-episode notes published in the podcast feed.

18. Watch a page for changes

On any page, tap the Page Info button and choose Notify Me. Here’s the interesting part: You write in plain language what you want Safari to check for, then tap Next. Safari will check daily by default. You can tap Edit while creating the notification or afterward to switch to hourly, weekly, or monthly, and set the time of day.

19. Scan a card into Wallet

You can create entries for cards, membership cards, and other kinds of barcode/QR code-related proofs of entry or membership from scratch, a task formerly available only for third-party apps and websites.

Tap the Add button in Wallet, then tap Create a Pass. You’re guided through a few steps, one of which lets you scan the existing card, so that Wallet can pull in its number, barcode, or QR code. You can fill out details that aren’t present on the card or captured by Wallet.

20. Share details at the till

Entirely new is Tap to Share with merchants at the point of sale, such as in a store or at a fair. This makes in-person Apple Pay more akin to Apple Pay in Safari. Tap to Share lets an entire set of interactions occur before you pay. You start by approving a connection with a merchant’s iPhone that has a supported payment app. (Ostensibly, this may encompass not just companies like Square and Stripe, but in-house developer apps for retailers like Old Navy or Lowe’s.)

Once you begin, you can choose what you share with the business—like contact details, a shipping address, or your email. This also means you don’t have to state this information aloud or rely on the merchant typing it in correctly! A merchant can offer to sign you up for a membership or loyalty program. You can use a pass from the merchant, or they can issue one, related to discounts, credits, or other transaction-related purposes. Finally, you see the full cart as a digital receipt before completing payment with Apple Pay.

21. Read anything in Accessibility Reader

Accessibility Reader used to require a shortcut trigger. Now, you can use the share menu in any app to open content in the reader.

22. Captions for any video

Your iPhone and iPad now generate captions from any uncaptioned video you’re watching in Photos and other supported apps. (This isn’t related to tvOS or TV app captioning.) If captions already exist, you can have them automatically translated between supported languages.

23. iPad tips: the menu bar

In iPadOS 26, the menu bar had to be triggered either by swiping down from the top of the display or by hovering with a pointing device, at which point it would appear. It then hid, after a short delay, when it wasn’t in use or being hovered over.

In iPadOS 27, the default behavior appears similar, but there are two significant changes:

• The app name always appears on the far-left side of the menu bar, at the upper-left corner of the screen.
• To unfurl the menu bar, tap or drag over the app name.

Along with that new behavior, you can also opt to have the menu bar remain in place, persistent at all times. Go to Settings > Multitasking & Gestures, then disable Automatically Show and Hide Menu Bar.

24. React to a keyboard connecting

Apple previously didn’t offer a way to trigger an automation when a keyboard was connected to or removed from an iPad. This frustrated some users, who interact with their iPad differently when a keyboard is connected—such as in a dock-style environment—and when they are using only the touch screen or an Apple Pencil.

Now, you can use Shortcuts to create automations based on whether a keyboard was connected, disconnected, or the keyboard connection state changed. This includes the “Set multitasking mode to” item. You might want to switch between Full Screen Apps and Windowed Apps when using your iPad without a keyboard. You’d have to set up two shortcuts: one would trigger when the keyboard was attached; the other when detached.

For more iOS 27 tips and tricks, see the complete guide to every iOS 27 feature. There are also 36 changes that owe nothing to AI that I recommend you to check out.

Apple tends to release operating system changes as a two-beat sequence, like our heart going LUB-dub: The LUB beat is a major flex, like the introduction of Liquid Glass across all their operating systems in 2025. This year is a “dub,” a building-or-rebuilding year, in which Apple largely tweaks the previous cycle and offers incremental improvements, though some may feel quite large. If you have just upgraded, ten of them are worth trying first.

The 2026 set of releases, numbered 27—like car models are numbered in fall for the following year—is a “dub.” We see the rollout of the long-promised Siri upgrade, called Siri AI. Along with its improved performance, Siri AI and Apple Intelligence both extend much more deeply into apps and system functions across nearly all platforms. That’s the flagship feature.

This includes significant improvements to on-device searching. When you use Spotlight in iOS 27 or iPadOS 27 on devices with Apple Intelligence support, the Spotlight field has changed from Search to Search or Ask. You can perform searches or ask Siri questions via the same entry field, which expands Spotlight’s reach and Siri’s scope.

Starting in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 (as well as macOS 27 Golden Gate), Apple has leaned very heavily into so-called artificial intelligence to enhance the overall operating system experience and many apps. They rebranded Siri as Siri AI on devices with the minimum required hardware. (Check whether your device qualifies.)

Apple also offered four additional areas of focus:

• Interface tweaks: Apple devoted significant time during their Worldwide Developer Conference presentation in June 2026 to stepping way back from interface overreaches with the Liquid Glass interface. Apple made a number of worthwhile improvements in macOS 27, but far fewer in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27. The key change is a Liquid Glass slider—also in macOS—that lets you choose a degree of translucency. In iOS 26.1/iPadOS 26.1, Apple added a binary choice of Clear (original flavor) and Tinted (somewhat less translucent). In iOS 27/iPadOS 27, that choice is now a slider.

The company also provided minor improvements to iPadOS 27, following the significant overhaul and improvements introduced in iPadOS 26, which were generally well received. See what’s new for iPad.

• Child safety and Screen Time: Nobody loves Screen Time, because it works erratically and doesn’t always map to what parents want to limit. Apple has regrouped and reworked Screen Time to better allot time. Let’s see if it works better, too! Child safety enhancements include intervening for gore and violence, and better oversight of new connections in FaceTime, Messages, and Phone.
• Accessibility: A cornucopia of individual improvements in Accessibility adds up. Among them: on-device subtitles for any video across all platforms, developer access to FaceTime that will let sign language interpreters join a call, and greater use of Apple Intelligence to describe things in images and in Magnifier.
• Communications: While Apple didn’t perform the same kind of huge overhaul to FaceTime, Messages, and Phone in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 as they did in the previous releases, I’ve provided a one-stop shop for changes affecting those apps, as well as cellular and Wi-Fi.

Apple also discussed in the lead-up to the release of the new operating system how much faster everything would be, but a list of those promises doesn’t help you get more familiar with iOS 27 and iPadOS 27! Because this book doesn’t benchmark these sorts of changes, I can only say: you should be pleased.

I don’t want to say everything else is miscellaneous, as there are hundreds—maybe thousands—of other changes. (You can find extensive rundowns.) Instead, let me say that Apple’s extensive work means many apps and system features have been modified, matured, or enhanced, as you will see in the rest of the book.

How Apple numbers its operating systems

Apple began their current numbering system in 2025, with the releases of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS all with a base number of 26 for 2026. This continued in 2026 with the release of all operating systems numbered 27.

Before this, Apple incremented their operating systems differently depending on whether they were initial or subsequent releases. A change described as coming from an older version will therefore show an 8- or 9-number leap—say, from iOS 18 to 26 or 27—even though “26” is the very next version after “18.”

Apple Intelligence reaches into a dozen apps. Where to find it in each one is set out separately. For the upgrade itself, start with which iPhones and iPads can install iOS 27, then how to install it.

Apple tends to release operating system changes as a two-beat sequence, like our heart going LUB-dub: The LUB beat is a major flex, like the introduction of Liquid Glass across all their operating systems in 2025. This year is a "dub," a building-or-rebuilding year, in which Apple largely tweaks the previous cycle and offers incremental improvements, though some may feel quite large.

The 2026 set of releases, numbered 27–like car models are numbered in fall for the following year–is a "dub." We see the rollout of the long-promised Siri upgrade, called Siri AI. Along with its improved performance, Siri AI and Apple Intelligence both extend much more deeply into apps and system functions across nearly all platforms. That’s the flagship feature.

Our iOS 27 guide follows the order you will actually meet those changes: the upgrade itself, then Siri AI, then Apple Intelligence inside the apps, then the interface that changed under you, and so on through to the apps and Apple Pay. Two further sections cover what comes after — keeping the phone safe, and finding it again if it goes missing.

This is a comprehensive guide with all of our coverage, and it’s a useful resource for iPhone and iPad users new to iOS 27 or those who might want a recap on what’s new.

Before you upgrade

Upgrading your device should be a cinch. But iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 have minimum hardware requirements. You won’t be able to upgrade any iPhone or iPad that isn’t a supported model. There are further limitations to using Apple Intelligence, which requires certain processor features and applies only to a subset of iPhones and iPads that can install iOS 27 and iPadOS 27.

• iOS 27 Compatibility: Which iPhones and iPads Can Upgrade
• How to Install iOS 27 and iPadOS 27
• Everything New in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27
• iOS 27 Is Out: 10 Features to Try First

The Siri AI guide

Siri AI is the flagship of this release, and it has a complete guide of its own. Siri spent years seeming like it didn’t quite fit the level of quality Apple aspires to. Worse, the company announced capabilities it wasn’t able to release, and features that have disappointed. You can tell this wasn’t just users carping: more than one head of the Siri effort has left the company altogether.

Apple Intelligence was more of a success, if limited. The company, making use of mostly on-device computation, focused their use of Apple Intelligence on specific tasks within apps or systemwide. I think many of these attempts were boring or unnecessary: generating custom emojis, Image Playground for slightly icky picture generation, and the global Writing Tools, which were worse than many previous generations of non-AI-based assistants.

• What Siri AI Means for Your iPhone and iPad
• Everything New in Siri AI Compared to the Old Siri
• How to Activate the New Siri on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Watch
• How to Ask Siri AI Follow-Up Questions
• How to Use the New Siri App
• The Siri AI Commands Worth Knowing
• What to Ask Siri AI: Examples That Actually Work
• How Siri AI and Spotlight Merged Into One Field
• Every Siri Setting Worth Changing in iOS 27
• How Siri AI Processing Works, On Your Device and in the Cloud
• The Siri AI Privacy Limits Apple Doesn’t Advertise
• How to Use ChatGPT With Siri AI
• How AI Models Learn, and the Copyright Fight

Apple Intelligence inside the apps

In the iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 updates, Apple expanded the use of Apple Intelligence across more apps and added features to apps that already had some Apple Intelligence support. Apple Intelligence is designed to synthesize information, like creating summaries, as well as generate stuff, such as text or images. Some of the elements are distinctly more useful than others.

• Where to Find Apple Intelligence in Each App
• What’s New in Mail and Messages in iOS 27
• Apple Intelligence in Photos: What’s New in iOS 27
• Safari in iOS 27: Page Summaries, Tab Groups, and More
• What’s New in Reminders and Notes in iOS 27
• Apple Intelligence in Calendar, Maps, and More in iOS 27
• iOS 27: How to Use Intelligent Actions in Shortcuts
• Focus in iOS 27: Reduce Interruptions and Intelligent Breakthrough
• How to Use Write With Siri and Edit With Siri
• How to Ask Siri About What’s On Your Screen in iOS 27
• iOS 27: How to Use Siri Mode in the Camera App
• How to Split a Restaurant Bill With Apple Cash in iOS 27
• The Apple Intelligence Features to Skip in iOS 27

The interface changed under you

Few interface changes Apple has made have been more criticized than their introduction of Liquid Glass in their version 26 operating system releases; few have been more praised than bringing a full-featured windowing environment to iPadOS 26.

Apple has learned from both changes and added maturity to them. Liquid Glass can now be practically disabled—almost turned off with Reduce Transparency—while the iPad received many more minor changes that are welcome, but not critical.

• How to Reduce Liquid Glass Transparency in iOS 27
• What’s New for iPad in iPadOS 27
• 36 New Features in iOS 27 That Are Not AI

Setting it up for children

Over the last few years, Apple has released a number of features that parents can use for children that are aimed at reducing two categories of risk: use of apps parents disapprove of, activities parents want to discourage or limit, and spending money online; and exposure to unwanted contact, images, and videos, as well as preventing children from being able to make unfettered connections or send material to arbitrary people.

• How to Set Up Screen Time and Parental Controls in iOS 27
• iOS 27 Blurs Gore and Violence for Children

Accessibility

Accessibility is a catch-all term for a large number of features, apps, and adjustments that Apple designs to improve access to kinds of things that may be harder for some people, whether due to motor limitations, eyesight or hearing, or the language they speak.

Many of these features can benefit a much larger group of people than any narrowly defined as “disabled”; automatic, high-quality captioning of video content is a great example, as is having a voice read text aloud from webpages or describe images.

• The Apple Intelligence Accessibility Features in iOS 27
• The Action Button Feature Apple Promised and Hasn’t Shipped

Communications

Following significant overhauls to their three communications apps in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26—FaceTime, Messages, and Phone—Apple has relaxed a bit with changes in the 27 series of releases. Here’s what you should pay attention to.

• What’s New in FaceTime, Messages, Phone and Wi-Fi in iOS 27
• Live Translation in iOS 27: FaceTime, Phone, and Messages

The apps, one by one

Beyond the big changes, many apps in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 received smaller tweaks or modest new features.

• Photos in iOS 27: Keywords, Shared Albums and More
• Clock, Find My, Health and Podcasts in iOS 27

Apple Pay and Wallet

Apple also made one systemwide change so far that I can tell you about, with big updates to Apple Pay and point-of-sale payments.

• What’s New for Apple Pay and Wallet in iOS 27
• How to Turn Any Card Into a Wallet Pass in iOS 27

Keeping it safe

An upgrade is a good moment to check the settings you set once and then forget. These come from a separate guide to securing Apple devices rather than from the iOS 27 release notes, so they apply whichever version you are running.

• Do You Need More Security Than Apple’s Defaults?
• How to Set Up and Disable Touch ID and Face ID
• How to Turn On Stolen Device Protection on iPhone
• How Thieves Steal iPhone Passcodes, and How to Stop Them
• How to Set an iPhone Passcode Stronger Than Six Digits
• How to Turn On Advanced Data Protection for iCloud
• Where Apple Stores Your Passwords and Passkeys
• How to Turn On Lockdown Mode, and Who Needs It
• How to Prepare for Losing Access to Your Apple Account

Finding your things

Find My changed in iOS 27, and the AirTag hardware changed with it. This section covers the whole system: devices, people, and the trackers you attach to your things.

• How Find My Works: Devices, People and Items
• How to Turn On Find My on iPhone, iPad and Mac
• How to Share Your Location From an iPhone
• How to Stop or Pause Sharing Your Location
• How to Find a Lost iPhone or Mac
• How to Find Lost AirPods
• How to Mark an iPhone as Lost and Lock It
• How to Erase a Lost iPhone or Mac Remotely
• How to Set Up an AirTag on iPhone or iPad
• How to Use Precision Finding to Locate an AirTag
• “AirTag Found Moving With You”: What It Means and What to Do
• How to Check Whether Someone Is Tracking You

Apple released iOS 27 on Monday 14 September 2026, alongside iPadOS 27 and macOS 27 Golden Gate.

Apple tends to release operating system changes as a two-beat sequence, like our heart going LUB-dub: The LUB beat is a major flex, like the introduction of Liquid Glass across all their operating systems in 2025. This year is a “dub,” a building-or-rebuilding year, in which Apple largely tweaks the previous cycle and offers incremental improvements, though some may feel quite large.

Below, we have highlighted ten new features and changes in iOS 27 that you should try first. These ten features are worth ten minutes on the day you upgrade. Each is visible straight away, none needs new hardware, and most take under a minute.

For everything else, see what’s new in iOS 27, or the 37 changes that owe nothing to AI.

1. Dial down Liquid Glass

When you upgrade to iOS 27 or iPadOS 27, the last stages of the installation present a new screen that lets you choose to adjust Liquid Glass using a slider. If you don’t make the adjustment at that moment, you can do so later, or change your initial choice. Go to Settings > Appearance > Liquid Glass.

This new screen offers a slider you can drag from the left edge, which Apple describes as “More Clear” (most Liquid Glass effect) across a range to the right: “More Tinted” (most opaque). Apple makes it easy to visualize by providing a scrollable preview that shows Liquid Glass elements overlaid on a webpage with images and text.

See how to reduce Liquid Glass transparency for the two accessibility settings that go further.

2. Ask Siri a real question

While Apple has rebranded Siri as “Siri AI” on supported devices and in their marketing, you won’t see that name on your devices. It’s still called Siri. But everything is affected by the availability of Apple Intelligence. Whenever you invoke Siri on an Apple Intelligence-supported device, you’re invoking Siri AI.

Siri now provides much more accurate and detailed answers than before, even reaching into other apps to provide more information. Ask it a question, and it parses the results instead of trying to squeeze them into a format it understands.

Here are the most significant things Siri AI can do that its predecessor Siri could not:

• Use your data to produce better results or find things. One of the biggest ongoing complaints about Siri is that for software that ostensibly had access to our email, messages, contacts, calendar entries, photos, and other private data while running entirely on our devices, it sure didn’t know much about us. With Siri AI, you can ask, “Who did I have lunch with in 2013 in New Haven?” and it may be able to answer. (Whether that is invasive is a fair question.)
• Answer questions about what’s on screen. You could be looking at a webpage, reading a Wikipedia entry, having a conversation in Messages, or writing an email, and can ask Siri for more information about or to explain something that’s visible.
• Engage in a back-and-forth conversation. Siri has become something more like a chatbot, though it’s not quite as open-ended as the ones from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and others. However, it retains context and remembers aspects of conversations to provide better insight in the future.
• Create a plan. You might ask Siri to help you figure out the best sights to see in New York. Unlike chatbots that rely solely on synthesizing vast data stores, Siri can use your information, Apple’s human-made travel guides, map data, and other information to produce something that could be much more useful.
• Use a Siri app. You can revisit Siri conversations using the Siri app, the first time Apple has offered that kind of interaction with Siri.

One caveat before you try it: Siri AI ships in beta. Apple has hedged on details, stating only that it will be available in beta form, and not specifying when that beta might end. It needs an iPhone 15 Pro or later. It is English-only at launch, and is not offered in the European Union or China. In the beta period you had to request access at Settings > Siri. Check there first if you do not see it.

3. Find Siri’s new home

Instead of the glow around all four edges of your device in iOS 26/iPadOS 26, Siri in iOS 27/iPadOS 27 appears as an orb at the top of the screen. The design cleverly hides the non-screen areas in Dynamic Island on the many iPhone models with that carveout.

You can bring up Siri (by default), as in previous releases, by saying “Siri” or “Hey Siri,” or by pressing and holding the side button. However, the change introduced in iOS 26 that let you double-tap the bottom of the screen is gone. Instead, you can swipe down on a Home screen to reveal the new combination of Spotlight and Siri: a field labeled Search or Ask. You can type into that field, or tap the Dictation button and talk to Siri that way.

4. Set a Separate Alarm Volume

It took this long for Apple to let you set the volume of alarms and timers hitting zero seconds separately from your ringtone volume. Settings now includes an “Alarms and Timers” section with its own Match Ringtone Volume toggle. If you toggle it off, a dedicated slider appears that allows you to drop the ringer volume to nothing, and you’ll still be woken at whatever alarm volume you choose. Go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics and, under Alarms and Timers, disable Match Ringtone Volume. Drag the slider that appears to set your alarm and timer volume.

More in what’s new in Clock, Find My, Health and Podcasts.

5. Use both FaceTime cameras

After many, many years of FaceTime supporting a single camera view on iPhone, you can now use the front and back cameras simultaneously. The proviso? You need an iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, or iPhone Air and iOS 27. The other person or people can see your dual-camera feed only if they have iOS 27, iPadOS 27, or macOS 27. (This builds off the dual-capture mode in the Camera app on those models introduced in iOS 26.)

To use the dual-camera mode, in an active FaceTime session (or before someone has joined), tap the Flip Camera button in the inset selfie view. This shows both cameras by default.

If the person on the other end of the call has an older iPhone, they can still view your dual camera feed as long as their device is running iOS 27.

More in what changed in FaceTime, Messages, Phone and Wi-Fi.

6. Boost Your iPhone Wi-Fi With New Connectivity Assist Feature

Apple tried to tune up a key issue years ago with a feature they called Wi-Fi Assist: when you had a weak signal, there might be a better, higher-speed cellular connection available instead. Your device would then tap into the cell signal while the Wi-Fi signal was poor.

While Wi-Fi Assist helped, it didn’t solve the common problem you are certainly familiar with, when your iPhone won’t unclasp its Wi-Fi grasp as you walk out of one space—like your home or office—and there’s still a tendril of signal left.

Apple rebranded the feature as Connectivity Assist, and if you had Wi-Fi Assist enabled—it was by default—you’ll find the new feature already turned on in Settings > Wi-Fi.

I know how aggravating it is, because my house Wi-Fi barely reaches where we park our cars out front on the street. Whenever I try to pull up Maps for directions, I have to turn off Wi-Fi most days. Connectivity Assist promises to solve that precise issue.

7. Add keywords to photos

It took many years, but you can finally apply keywords to media in the Photos app on an iPhone and iPad. Huzzah? (Keywords are a useful way to link images for searching and organization.) However, you can still only apply keywords to items one at a time, as opposed to singly or in selections of two or more on a Mac. To add keywords, tap the info button, then tap Add Keywords.

More in keywords and Shared Albums in Photos.

8. Scan a card into Wallet

You can create entries for cards, membership cards, and other kinds of barcode/QR code-related proofs of entry or membership from scratch, a task formerly available only for third-party apps and websites.

Tap the Add button in Wallet, then tap Create a Pass. You’re guided through a few steps, one of which lets you scan the existing card, so that Wallet can pull in its number, barcode, or QR code. You can fill out details that aren’t present on the card or captured by Wallet.

More in what’s new in Apple Pay and Wallet.

9. Caption any video

Your iPhone and iPad now generate captions from any uncaptioned video you’re watching in Photos and other supported apps. (This isn’t related to tvOS or TV app captioning.) If captions already exist, you can have them automatically translated between supported languages.

More in the accessibility changes and the Action button.

10. Tap to Share at checkout

Entirely new iOS 27 feature is Tap to Share with merchants at the point of sale, such as in a store or at a fair. This makes in-person Apple Pay more akin to Apple Pay in Safari. Tap to Share lets an entire set of interactions occur before you pay. You start by approving a connection with a merchant’s iPhone that has a supported payment app. (Ostensibly, this may encompass not just companies like Square and Stripe, but in-house developer apps for retailers like Old Navy or Lowe’s.)

Once you begin, you can choose what you share with the business—like contact details, a shipping address, or your email. This also means you don’t have to state this information aloud or rely on the merchant typing it in correctly! A merchant can offer to sign you up for a membership or loyalty program. You can use a pass from the merchant, or they can issue one, related to discounts, credits, or other transaction-related purposes. Finally, you see the full cart as a digital receipt before completing payment with Apple Pay.

More in what’s new in Apple Pay and Wallet.

iOS 27 Compatible iPhones

These iPhone models are compatible with iOS 27:

• iPhone 18 Pro
• iPhone 18 Pro Max
• iPhone Duo
• iPhone 17e
• iPhone 17
• iPhone 17 Pro
• iPhone 17 Pro Max
• iPhone Air
• iPhone 16e
• iPhone 16
• iPhone 16 Plus
• iPhone 16 Pro
• iPhone 16 Pro Max
• iPhone 15
• iPhone 15 Plus
• iPhone 15 Pro
• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• iPhone 14
• iPhone 14 Plus
• iPhone 14 Pro
• iPhone 14 Pro Max
• iPhone 13
• iPhone 13 mini
• iPhone 13 Pro
• iPhone 13 Pro Max
• iPhone 12
• iPhone 12 mini
• iPhone 12 Pro
• iPhone 12 Pro Max
• iPhone 11
• iPhone 11 Pro
• iPhone 11 Pro Max
• iPhone SE (2nd generation and later)

More in iOS 27

Other new features in iOS 27 include iPhone Handoff, which moves a call and a phone number between two iPhones. There is also the ability to split a bill with Apple Cash; the ability to hide your location in Find My; and more. The full list runs to 37 changes that owe nothing to AI, on top of everything else in the release.

Apple tends to release operating system changes as a two-beat sequence, like our heart going LUB-dub: The LUB beat is a major flex, like the introduction of Liquid Glass across all their operating systems in 2025. This year is a “dub,” a building-or-rebuilding year, in which Apple largely tweaks the previous cycle and offers incremental improvements, though some may feel quite large.

The flagship feature of the 2026 releases is Siri AI, and Apple Intelligence extending more deeply into apps and system functions. But Apple named four other areas of focus alongside it, and three of them have nothing to do with AI at all: interface tweaks, child safety and Screen Time, and communications.

Here are 37 changes in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 that have nothing to do with Siri AI or Apple Intelligence. For the release as a whole, including what the AI features actually do, see what’s new in iOS 27.

iOS 27 non-AI features:

1. The Liquid Glass slider, most visible of these features

The introduction of Liquid Glass across Apple’s 26 releases of their operating systems elicited a lot of responses. A whole lot. It’s hard to know how hated this new interface approach was, but given how quickly Apple backed off from it, I would have to say a lot—particularly in iOS and iPadOS, where the translucency of Liquid Glass made it hard to find interface elements and read text.

Apple reacted by adding a feature in iOS 26.1/iPadOS 26.1 to reduce its impact by letting you switch between Clear, which was the original flavor of Liquid Glass, to Tinted, which reduced translucency by a fair amount, but not to zero.

In iOS 27/iPadOS 27, Apple switched up their approach, replacing the binary option with a slider from (now lowercase) clear to tinted, along with a preview of how it looks against interface elements.

When you upgrade to iOS 27 or iPadOS 27, the last stages of the installation present a new screen that lets you choose to adjust Liquid Glass using a slider. If you don’t make the adjustment at that moment, you can do so later, or change your initial choice. Go to Settings > Appearance > Liquid Glass.

This new screen offers a slider you can drag from the left edge, which Apple describes as “More Clear” (most Liquid Glass effect) across a range to the right: “More Tinted” (most opaque). Apple makes it easy to visualize by providing a scrollable preview that shows Liquid Glass elements overlaid on a webpage with images and text.

At the More Clear setting you can hardly read—or even find—a button or field over text and an image; at the midway point it’s better, but still not ideal; at More Tinted there is enough contrast for legibility. To me, it looks like what an interface designer would show an executive, expecting the executive to pick the most tinted option. Apple’s leadership didn’t do that for 26.0. In 26.1, we got a binary choice; in 27, a range of choices.

2. Turning Liquid Glass off almost entirely

Apple separately offers two Accessibility settings that affected Liquid Glass in iOS 26 and iPadOS 26. In the 27 releases, only one of the two has any real impact:

• Reduce Transparency: Go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size and enable Reduce Transparency. This flattens Liquid Glass, removing transparency and providing an almost identical look to iOS 18/iPadOS 18. The level of Liquid Glass you have enabled doesn’t have an effect.
• Increase Contrast: Use Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Increase Contrast to bump up the difference in tones. In iOS 27/iPadOS 27, the difference appears slight, where it was sharply distinct in the previous releases.

You can’t change the Liquid Glass intensity when either of the next two options is enabled. When you attempt to change the Liquid Glass setting, you’re told that Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast must be disabled. You can tap Turn Off.

3. FaceTime uses both cameras

After many, many years of FaceTime supporting a single camera view on iPhone, you can now use the front and back cameras simultaneously. The proviso? You need an iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, or iPhone Air and iOS 27. The other person or people can see your dual-camera feed only if they have iOS 27, iPadOS 27, or macOS 27. (This builds off the dual-capture mode in the Camera app on those models introduced in iOS 26.)

To use the dual-camera mode, in an active FaceTime session (or before someone has joined), tap the Flip Camera button in the inset selfie view. This shows both cameras by default. You can then do something to change that.

4. Connectivity Assist drops weak Wi-Fi

Apple tried to tune up a key issue years ago with a feature they called Wi-Fi Assist: when you had a weak signal, there might be a better, higher-speed cellular connection available instead. Your device would then tap into the cell signal while the Wi-Fi signal was poor.

While Wi-Fi Assist helped, it didn’t solve the common problem you are certainly familiar with, when your iPhone won’t unclasp its Wi-Fi grasp as you walk out of one space—like your home or office—and there’s still a tendril of signal left.

Apple rebranded the feature as Connectivity Assist, and if you had Wi-Fi Assist enabled—it was by default—you’ll find the new feature already turned on in Settings > Wi-Fi.

I know how aggravating it is, because my house Wi-Fi barely reaches where we park our cars out front on the street. Whenever I try to pull up Maps for directions, I have to turn off Wi-Fi most days. Connectivity Assist promises to solve that precise issue.

5. AirDrop is five times faster

Also in both iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 is an AirDrop speed up. Apple says AirDrop transfers could be as much as five times faster.

6. Alarms get their own volume

It took this long for Apple to let you set the volume of alarms and timers hitting zero seconds separately from your ringtone volume. Go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics and, under Alarms and Timers, disable Match Ringtone Volume.

7. Four RCS fixes in Messages

Messages received a tune-up, not an overhaul. Most change are related to RCS, the industry-supported messaging protocol that Google uses in Android. The changes are:

• Outgoing messages show a send indicator so you can see progress on slower networks or with larger files.
• When you’re sending large photos or videos in a conversation that uses RCS (with Android users), this no longer slows down the typing part of the conversation.
• Reply threading now works with RCS messages.
• RCS messages also support a wider range of tapbacks and reactions.

Apple added support for end-to-end encryption over RCS between their ecosystem and Google’s as a beta release in iOS 26.5.

8. Find My gets custom durations

The native Find My app on all platforms has two changes related to duration or availability when you share your location with other people:

• Previously, you could share your location for an hour, until the end of the day, or indefinitely. Now you can set a custom period of time.
• If you’re sharing your location with someone, you can hide your location from your end until the next morning (at 4 a.m., and they’re not notified. They’re also not told when you resume sharing, or “unhide” your location. They simply see you with a “location unavailable” label.

9. Hiding your location without telling anyone

This is widely seen as another tool for people facing family or intimate-partner abuse to hide their whereabouts without an abuser knowing.

10. Keywords arrive in Photos on iPhone

It took many years, but you can finally apply keywords to media in the Photos app on an iPhone and iPad. Huzzah? (Keywords are a useful way to link images for searching and organization.) However, you can still only apply keywords to items one at a time, as opposed to singly or in selections of two or more on a Mac. To add keywords, tap the info button, then tap Add Keywords.

11. Show Selected in Photos

When you make a selection by tapping the Select button in the upper-right corner of any multiple-item view in Photos, a new Show Selected button appears at the bottom. Tap it, and it reveals just the items you chose. You can adjust the selection or view the images and videos in a carousel. Tap Deselect All to remove the current selection.

12. Two new Photos albums

Apple adds two new albums in Collections > Utilities. Captured by Me contains images or videos you created using any iPhone or iPad, such as via the Camera app or by taking a screenshot. The Identity Documents album uses machine learning (not Apple Intelligence) to collect scans or photos of personally identifying documents. (Identity Documents hasn’t yet appeared for me in iOS.)

13. Shared Albums finally upgrade

Apple hasn’t shaken up iCloud Shared Albums in several years, and it has notable omissions, such as the ability to share higher-resolution versions.

In iOS 27/iPadOS 27 (and on macOS 27 and at iCloud.com), you have access to several new features. However, you must first upgrade an album: select the album in Collections > Shared Albums, tap the More button, then tap Upgraded Shared Album. This may take some time—minutes or longer—depending on the size of the items in the library and your internet connection.

After upgrading, you have access to the following:

• Full-resolution photos and videos are now supported across all common formats.
• You can filter by photos or videos. Tap the Filter button, then tap Media Types.
• There’s a Create Shared Album option for any existing album. Tap the More button, then tap Create Shared Album.
• Albums can be set to expire after 30 days, but only when created. After creating a Shared Album from an existing album or by tapping the Add button in the Collections > Shared Albums view, enable Make Album Temporary.
• You can create an upload link that allows anyone—not just people with access to the album—to upload images. With the album selected, tap the Share button, tap “Only invited people can join,” and choose Anyone with the Link. (This is similar to other kinds of sharing across iOS 27/iPadOS 27).
• A recent activity log lets you see changes made to the album, including emoji reactions. (This doesn’t yet appear to be in place.)

14. Save a video frame

Three other changes, two new and one set of improvements, may be of interest.

You can extract a frame from a paused video to save as an image. Tap the More button and choose Save Video Frame.

15. Force Photos to sync now

Photos often decides to pause syncing to iCloud to avoid draining the battery, even when the battery is quite full. You can now go to Settings > Apps > Photos > Sync Immediately and choose For Today. This prioritizes syncing instead of preserving battery life for the remainder of the calendar day. If Low Power Mode or Low Data Mode are enabled, Photos will still pause until those modes are turned off, such as by recharging the phone for the former.

16. Slideshows from any album

Slideshows can now be built from any album or even a selection of media, rather than relying on memories.

17. Podcasts searches episode notes

If you navigate to a podcast’s view of all of its episodes by tapping the podcast and then tapping Episodes, you can now search against the title and show notes of all listed episodes.

This doesn’t search transcripts, which Podcasts generates for some shows. It searches only the per-episode notes published in the podcast feed.

18. Reminders actions in Shortcuts

Reminders actions now appear in Shortcuts, too, so you can create and delete groups, manage lists, and create sections.

19. Wallet builds a pass from a plastic card

You can create entries for cards, membership cards, and other kinds of barcode/QR code-related proofs of entry or membership from scratch, a task formerly available only for third-party apps and websites.

Tap the Add icon in Wallet, then tap Create a Pass. You’re guided through a few steps, one of which lets you scan the existing card, so that Wallet can pull in its number, barcode, or QR code. You can fill out details that aren’t present on the card or captured by Wallet.

20. Poster-style membership cards

As you can see in the figures above, a “poster”-style card display used for passes now extends to membership cards, gift cards, and loyalty/reward cards. This new display allows up to two tappable actions.

21. Hotel keys and preauthorized payments

In unrelated updates, Wallet now shows trip details and other real-time updates to hotel keys at hotels that support these new options.

Finally, a new Preauthorized Payments section in Wallet gives you a one-stop insight into what you’ve allowed other companies to charge you for. Apple describes this as “subscriptions and auto-reloads to installment loan repayments, recurring billing, and deferred payments” among other preauthorizations.

22. Change your card mid-checkout

The updated Apple Pay checkout sheet lets you change your payment card directly without canceling, exiting, and starting over. It will also show information like available rewards, debit card balance, and alternative payment options. These changes are noted as coming “this fall,” while “later this year” you’ll be able to add funds to a debit card during a checkout session without exiting, or within Wallet.

23. Apple Pay in any browser

Apple now allows merchants to let you pay with a third-party browser using Apple Pay with a scannable code and an iPhone as the glue. Start the payment in a third-party browser, choose Apple Pay, and the merchant’s site will display a code that can be scanned by an iPhone to authorize Apple Pay.

24. Tap to Share at checkout

Entirely new is Tap to Share with merchants at the point of sale, such as in a store or at a fair. This makes in-person Apple Pay more akin to Apple Pay in Safari. Tap to Share lets an entire set of interactions occur before you pay. You start by approving a connection with a merchant’s iPhone that has a supported payment app. (Ostensibly, this may encompass not just companies like Square and Stripe, but in-house developer apps for retailers like Old Navy or Lowe’s.)

Once you begin, you can choose what you share with the business—like contact details, a shipping address, or your email. This also means you don’t have to state this information aloud or rely on the merchant typing it in correctly! A merchant can offer to sign you up for a membership or loyalty program. You can use a pass from the merchant, or they can issue one, related to discounts, credits, or other transaction-related purposes. Finally, you see the full cart as a digital receipt before completing payment with Apple Pay.

25. Screen Time, rebuilt

On the parental-restriction front, Screen Time was Apple’s most direct foray into enabling guardians to shape children’s digital access. But Screen Time is janky—there’s no better word. It is sometimes hard to configure, it often fails, and kids can work around it even when they aren’t intending to.

Screen Time was created to let parents and guardians set policies for children that were automatically enforced by Apple’s operating systems. No matter what device a child used that was logged in to the same Apple Account, Screen Time restrictions would remain the same. In practice, not so much, and it remains to be seen how well this Apple-described redesign will improve that consistency.

Screen Time controls require that you set up a Child Account, which has to be part of Family Sharing. In the past, I know that parents have sometimes created regular accounts for their children or faked their birth dates to make them older out of frustration with Screen Time and other features that didn’t work as described.

26. A setup assistant for parents

A new tool for parents helps guide them in choosing apps they want their children to have access to.

27. Ask to Browse, for websites

Apple already offered an Ask to Buy option, which let a kid send a request to the account’s owner in the Family Sharing group when they want to make an App Store purchase or download a free app. Ask to Browse builds on that, requiring that child request access to any website they haven’t previously been granted permission to use, or that a parent hadn’t already added to a list of acceptable sites.

The request is sent via Messages to the adult owner of the Family Sharing group and any other adult designated as Parent/Guardian, as you can see in the figure above. The parent or guardian can then tap or click Decline or Approve.

28. Time allowances by category

The previous Screen Time controls for setting how much time apps and other resources could be used were difficult to manage. The new ones, synced across all platforms, let a parent set Time Allowances, with separate settings for weekdays and weekends. Apple has a recommended maximum based on age that they developed in conjunction with child-development experts, they say.

Time Allowances define the total screen time permitted per day, and then are divided up into maximum amounts by category: Entertainment, Games, Social Media, and All Others. Parents can further create time windows within the days during which some categories aren’t available. Apple’s example, shown in the screenshot, is to turn off the Entertainment, Games, and Social Media categories during school hours.

This overhauled approach also gives parents a sort of dashboard for each child. They can see current usage stats. That’s also where a child’s access can be paused—i.e., cut off entirely for the moment—or they can be granted unlimited use for the rest of the day, or until a parent revokes that.

29. Blurring gore, not just nudity

Apple has gingerly expanded features in this category. In this set of releases, Apple has pushed forward just a single change. The Communication Safety feature, which is enabled by default for children 13–17, already blurs any image or video that appears to contain nudity, whether the child is receiving it or attempting to send it, across a range of Apple’s communications apps, including Messages, AirDrop, and FaceTime video messages. The blurred image comes with a warning, offering guidance on seeking help. (For children under 13, they’re also prompted to start a conversation with a parent or guardian.)

In the 27 series of releases, images and video that a screening algorithm determines contain gore or violence also trigger the blur filter and warning.

30. Accessibility Reader gets sharper

Many of these features can benefit a much larger group of people than any narrowly defined as “disabled”; automatic, high-quality captioning of video content is a great example, as is having a voice read text aloud from webpages or describe images.

Stripping out inessential components: Accessibility Reader acts like a beefed-up version of Reader in Safari, removing ads, headers, footers, navigational elements, and other material that isn’t part of the actual webpage or app view content.

Formatting clean-up: While removing unnecessary parts, the reader also structures what remains into more easily readable elements, like headers, lists, and image captions.

Use via any app: Accessibility Reader used to require a shortcut trigger. Now, you can use the share menu in any app to open content in the reader.

More nuanced content interpretation: The reader used to strip tables and images that appeared inline. Those now show up.

Translation: There’s no need to switch to another app or use a pop-up option. Accessibility Reader can translate supported languages into other supported languages.

31. Captions generated for any video

Your iPhone and iPad now generate captions from any uncaptioned video you’re watching in Photos and other supported apps. (This isn’t related to tvOS or TV app captioning.) If captions already exist, you can have them automatically translated between supported languages.

32. Health tracks perimenopause

The big news in the Health app for iPhone is that, if you have periods, Cycle Tracking supports perimenopause and menopause by notifying you when it identifies patterns consistent with perimenopause.

Other changes worth noting include:

• Health now has a Browse button (instead of a search icon), which better identifies what the action is. The design has changed from a list to a series of small color-coded cards.
• iPhones now support GymKit, which was available only on Apple Watch before this. You can now pair an iPhone directly with supported treadmills, bikes, and other gym equipment.

33. Home goes 4K

The Home app now supports 4K resolution video for live streaming and recording from cameras designed for HomeKit Secure Video and with any tier of iCloud+ and that, of course, have 4K output. (Apple still uses the HomeKit name there, even though the concept has been renamed Apple Home.)

If you have more than one camera, Home used to require awkward navigation among them. Now, you can see the previews in the main Home view, but tapping any camera brings up an aggregated view with a unified set of detected events.

34. Maps improves Flyover

Apple says Maps has an “enhanced Flyover” experience. This translates to less weird-looking landscape and building interpolation from satellite and street-level data when you look at cities using Maps’s 3D perspectives.

Maps also adds Local Lists, which are ostensibly algorithmically generated guides to local areas based on aggregated searches. Apple uses the word “trending” a couple of times in describing this feature, so it’s unclear if it’s just search-related—which gives zero insight into the quality of a restaurant or an experience—or factors in other data.

35. Keyboard automations on iPad

Apple rethought the iPad interface with iPadOS 26, adding robust windowing and multitasking features that brought it much closer to a general-purpose computing system like macOS. However, it still retained its unique iPad nature, such as its heavy reliance on gestures. iPadOS 27 builds on these improvements with refinements that help you use an iPad even more fully in the liminal space between tablet and computer.

Apple previously didn’t offer a way to trigger an automation when a keyboard was connected to or removed from an iPad. This frustrated some users, who interact with their iPad differently when a keyboard is connected—such as in a dock-style environment—and when they are using only the touch screen or an Apple Pencil.

Now, you can use Shortcuts to create automations based on whether a keyboard was connected, disconnected, or the keyboard connection state changed. This includes the “Set multitasking mode to” item. You might want to switch between Full Screen Apps and Windowed Apps when using your iPad without a keyboard. You’d have to set up two shortcuts: one would trigger when the keyboard was attached; the other when detached.

36. A persistent iPad menu bar

In iPadOS 26, the menu bar had to be triggered either by swiping down from the top of the display or by hovering with a pointing device, at which point it would appear. It then hid, after a short delay, when it wasn’t in use or being hovered over.

In iPadOS 27, the default behavior appears similar, but there are two significant changes:

• The app name always appears on the far-left side of the menu bar, at the upper-left corner of the screen.
• To unfurl the menu bar, tap or drag over the app name.

Along with that new behavior, you can also opt to have the menu bar remain in place, persistent at all times. Go to Settings > Multitasking & Gestures, then disable Automatically Show and Hide Menu Bar.

37. iPhone apps resize on iPad

iPadOS 27 fills a missing piece in Windowed Apps, the default setting that lets you resize app windows or use them in full-screen mode. iPhone apps that haven’t been developed as universal apps for both iOS and iPadOS still floated in their own fixed-size window.

iPhone apps released for iOS 27 automatically gain the capability to be resized in iPadOS 27, just as they can work at different sizes on different iPhone models.

Wallet bulges with the addition of even more features to an already stuffed portfolio.

You can create entries for cards, membership cards, and other kinds of barcode/QR code-related proofs of entry or membership from scratch, a task formerly available only for third-party apps and websites.

Tap the Add button in Wallet, then tap Create a Pass. You’re guided through a few steps, one of which lets you scan the existing card, so that Wallet can pull in its number, barcode, or QR code. You can fill out details that aren’t present on the card or captured by Wallet.

A “poster”-style card display used for passes now extends to membership cards, gift cards, and loyalty/reward cards. This new display allows up to two tappable actions.

In unrelated updates, Wallet now shows trip details and other real-time updates to hotel keys at hotels that support these new options.

Finally, a new Preauthorized Payments section in Wallet gives you a one-stop insight into what you’ve allowed other companies to charge you for. Apple describes this as “subscriptions and auto-reloads to installment loan repayments, recurring billing, and deferred payments” among other preauthorizations.

Apple Pay and Tap to Share

Apple made one systemwide change, with big updates to Apple Pay and point-of-sale payments.

After many years of mostly unchanged experiences, Apple offers a blowout with iOS 27 and iPadOS 27.

The updated Apple Pay checkout sheet lets you change your payment card directly without canceling, exiting, and starting over. It will also show information like available rewards, debit card balance, and alternative payment options. These changes are noted as coming “this fall,” while “later this year” you’ll be able to add funds to a debit card during a checkout session without exiting, or within Wallet.

Apple now allows merchants to let you pay with a third-party browser using Apple Pay with a scannable code and an iPhone as the glue. Start the payment in a third-party browser, choose Apple Pay, and the merchant’s site will display a code that can be scanned by an iPhone to authorize Apple Pay.

Entirely new is Tap to Share with merchants at the point of sale, such as in a store or at a fair. This makes in-person Apple Pay more akin to Apple Pay in Safari. Tap to Share lets an entire set of interactions occur before you pay. You start by approving a connection with a merchant’s iPhone that has a supported payment app. (Ostensibly, this may encompass not just companies like Square and Stripe, but in-house developer apps for retailers like Old Navy or Lowe’s.)

Once you begin, you can choose what you share with the business—like contact details, a shipping address, or your email. This also means you don’t have to state this information aloud or rely on the merchant typing it in correctly! A merchant can offer to sign you up for a membership or loyalty program. You can use a pass from the merchant, or they can issue one, related to discounts, credits, or other transaction-related purposes. Finally, you see the full cart as a digital receipt before completing payment with Apple Pay.

In the iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 updates, Apple expanded the use of Apple Intelligence across more apps and added features to apps that already had some Apple Intelligence support. Apple Intelligence is designed to synthesize information, like creating summaries, as well as generate stuff, such as text or images. Some of the elements are distinctly more useful than others.

Where to look for Apple Intelligence in individual apps:

• Calendar and Reminders: Enter text that is more freeform in nature than rigidly structured in Calendar or Reminders, and the apps offer suggestions for structured data replacement.
• Camera: Visual Intelligence is integrated as a Siri option in Camera alongside Photo and Video. With Siri selected, pointing the camera at certain items, like food, a restaurant receipt, or an event’s details, will result in a prompt you can tap. You can also tap the Siri button to analyze what’s in the view.
• Mail: Mail offers suggestions as you type to insert information from other apps and libraries, such as photos, or to take action, like creating an entry in Notes.
• Messages: Messages makes a suggestion when it thinks it makes sense to insert something from another app, like a photo.
• Notes: After making a sketch with an Apple Pencil on an iPad in Notes, you can use Image Wand to make it photorealistic.
• Passwords: The Passwords app scans for weak or compromised passwords at websites that support Apple’s method for automated password updates, then offers to fix those passwords for you.
• Photos: Photos improves its Clean Up feature to provide much better generative image replacement. It adds two new Apple Intelligence tools: Extend, to extend the borders of an image, and Reframe, which allows slightly changing the point of view and perspective of an image.
• Phone: While on a call, Phone may suggest contextually appropriate information, like a flight number when you call an airline.
• Safari: You can have Safari automatically organize tabs, bookmarks, and Reading Lists into a grouping within a tab group. Keep tabs (ha, ha) on changes to webpages with Notify Me, which lets you describe what you want to monitor and have it automatically checked at a recurring interval.
• Shortcuts: You can describe what you want via Siri AI in Shortcuts, and the app will attempt to write a shortcut for you.

Two more sit outside the apps themselves: Siri AI across the system, and Visual Intelligence on whatever is on your screen.