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macOS 27

How Siri AI and Spotlight Merged Into One Field

by Abigail Shilets

In the past, we turned to Spotlight to search for things like files, photos, email messages, and apps, while we used Siri to answer questions and perform simple actions on our devices. Now that the two are conceptually merged—and with the addition of personal context and extended Visual Intelligence—you can search by description, and Siri pulls together information from numerous sources to deliver results.

Use Siri for search

You can still search for files, photos, and other items on your device exactly as you did using Spotlight in the past. What’s new is that you can search more broadly, using natural language, in ways that require Siri to perform analysis, make inferences, or combine data from multiple sources.

For example, one of us got a text message in which the new school bus driver for one of his kids introduced herself. Later, he tried to recall the driver’s name, so he asked, What is the name of the new school bus driver?

Sure enough, Siri produced the correct name from the text in Messages and also provided a link to the original message. In other words, you’re still searching, but in a way that’s simpler for you while producing more sophisticated results.

Here are a few other examples:

  • Files related to dancing
  • People who sent in support requests in the past year
  • The dates of my last three dentist appointments
  • All the books I wrote between 2021 and 2025

Spotlight without Siri?

What if you just want a plain Spotlight search, without Siri’s involvement at all? You can still have it, with some extra effort.

On a Mac, activate Siri and type a search term, then press ⌘-2 to search for that term only within files and folders. You can also press ⌘-1 to look for apps, ⌘-3 to look for actions, or ⌘-4 to search your clipboard history.

On any device, you can also specify as part of your search term where Spotlight should look—for example, Files about cats or Contacts named John or Emails about Apple.

Tags: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27
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How to Use Write With Siri and Edit With Siri

by Emily Long

The previous two generations of macOS, iOS, and iPadOS included a collection of Apple Intelligence features that were collectively referred to as Writing Tools. They enabled your device to compose, rewrite, or proofread text and were available in nearly every app that provided text-editing capabilities. Starting in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, the term Writing Tools has disappeared, and in its place are Write with Siri and Edit with Siri, depending on the context. The underlying capabilities are broadly similar, but the interface has changed significantly.

Users can write and edit with Siri AI virtually anywhere they type by just describing what they need.

Write with Siri AI

Thanks to Apple Intelligence, Siri can compose text out of thin air. If you want a snappy reply to an email or text message, a report on any imaginable subject, a résumé or cover letter, a fairy tale to tell your grandchildren, or pretty much anything else that can be built out of words, you can simply describe what you want and, usually within seconds, Siri will write it for you.

We are aware that lots of people, from corporate drones to university students to lazy authors, have become dependent on this type of AI writing, and as professional authors, we have…feelings about that. At a bare minimum, we would roundly reject the idea of passing off any AI-written text as our own, but more than that, it would feel like spending decades of hard work to become a great chef and then letting a robot come up with recipes and create your meals for you. That misses the whole point of the task.

So, yeah, we’re not super jazzed about letting Siri write stuff, and practically speaking, Siri has never written anything that actually sounds like the way either of us write, even if it’s otherwise accurate.

Other LLM-based tools produce better results, sometimes sounding sensible or even being fully factual. But wrestling with a chatbot when we have the knowledge, wordsmith skills, and commitment to what we do makes little sense for us.

All that said, the feature is there, and you can use it, if you like, in any of these ways:

  • In most environments, including email, word processing documents, and forms on webpages, you can simply click or tap once in any spot where you can enter text, wait for the Write with Siri button to appear, and click or tap it to produce a Write with Siri field.
  • If the Siri icon doesn’t appear (as is the case in Messages, for example), you can right-click or Control-click (on a Mac) and choose Ask Siri, or tap once to bring up the text menu (on an iPhone or iPad) and then tap the Siri button to display an “Ask Siri about this” field.

Then type a description of what you want into the field, and suggested text appears, which you can then revise (or ask Siri to revise) as needed.

Edit with Siri AI

To use Siri’s help with editing existing text, begin by selecting the text you’d like help with. Wait a moment, and you should see a white Edit with Siri button to its left. Click or tap that button, and it’s replaced with a series of controls.

In macOS 27 Golden Gate, there’s no longer a Writing Tools submenu on the Edit menu or the right-click/Control-click contextual menu. However, you can right-click or Control-click selected text and choose Ask Siri, which lets you access the same tools that are available in the Edit with Siri field.

Your options are as follows:

  • Edit with Siri: In this field, type a description of how you’d like the text to change, and Siri offers a suggested rewrite. You can enter anything from a serious, specific request to Sprinkle in pop-culture references, Make it rhyme, or Use third-grade vocabulary, for example.
  • How does this sound? Siri provides a brief analysis of the tone and structure. It may tell you the text is clear and friendly, that it’s awkward and terse, or any number of other things. (It does all this in what strikes us as an excessively patronizing way, as is common for large language models.)
  • Rewrite: You’ll be shocked to learn that Rewrite commands rewrite the text! If you click Rewrite on its own, Siri tries to maintain the general tone and meaning while rephrasing the text a bit. Or, use the pop-up menu to choose the type of rewriting you want:

    • Friendly: The Friendly revision replaces the text with a more folksy version, which uses a simpler vocabulary and more informal phrasing.
    • Professional: This revision is almost the exact opposite of Friendly. The Professional revision aims to eliminate any personal touch or casual language, making the text more appropriate for business-related purposes.
    • Concise: The Concise revision is the “just the facts” version, with a minimum of extra detail and textual ornamentation.
  • Proofread: This tool finds and corrects problems like incorrect verb forms, superfluous or missing words or punctuation, and other mechanical issues. When you click or tap Proofread, Siri analyzes the selected text and adjusts it to reflect everything it thinks ought to change, with altered bits showing a blue underline. Click or tap any of those blue underlines to see an explanation of the change. You can also use the left and right arrows to step through other corrections. If you want to ignore this change and revert it to the original text, click the Revert button. Click or tap the thumbs up or thumbs down button to send Apple feedback about the proposed proofreading changes.

A Proofread bar also appears, featuring an Edit with Siri field you can use to make additional requests, plus an Undo button and a superfluous, never-enabled Redo button.

Options that were formerly part of Writing Tools, such as Summary, Key Points, List, and Table, no longer explicitly appear in the Write/Edit with Siri interface, but you can still use them. In the Edit with Siri field, you can type Summarize this, or Make this into a list, for example, and Siri does just that.

Tags: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27
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How to Ask Siri About What’s On Your Screen in iOS 27

by Stacey Butler

Visual Intelligence’s remit has grown substantially since it originally let your iPhone describe what it saw via the Camera in iOS 18.2. Generally, Visual Intelligence lets you query what it “sees” in a screenshot or through the camera, or take action on what appears. Swipe your finger around something to prompt a visual search that can explain what you’ve highlighted.

This can give you the answer to or produce a result based on these sorts of inner monologue statements: “What’s that plant?” “Turn the information on that poster into a calendar event.” “What sculpture is that?” “Read me the text in this screenshot.”

Starting with iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, and visionOS 27, you have more options and can get more information.

First, macOS and visionOS now support Visual Intelligence for the first time. On a Mac, you can have Visual Intelligence describe what’s on screen. With an Apple Vision Pro, you can have it describe things in your field of vision.

Second, on an iPhone or iPad, you can use Visual Intelligence directly through the Camera app with a new Siri button that sits alongside Video and Photo in the photo modes list below the shutter button.

Ask Siri about a screenshot

You can ask Siri about what it sees using Visual Intelligence in two different ways. On an iPhone or iPad, you use the screenshot shortcut to start the process; on a Mac, there’s a shortcut to capture part or the screen or a window that comes as part of macOS 27.

To take the screenshot on an iPhone, press and release the side button and the volume up button together. On an iPad, press and release the top button and either volume button; on an iPad with a Home button, press the top button and the Home button together.

You can also circle items with your finger or an Apple Pencil to highlight them.

Ask Siri about what’s on a Mac’s screen

Visual Intelligence can now see your screen. Ask Siri about anything on your screen, and it can analyze what it’s seeing and make sense of it. You can also focus Siri’s attention on just part of your screen:

  • Press ⌘-Shift-6 to highlight a portion of your screen. You can then ask Siri about something in that area.
  • Press ⌘-Shift-Space to ask Siri about the frontmost window.

If you’re using ⌘-Shift-6 for something else, make sure to reassign it either for Visual Intelligence or in another app using that combination to avoid a conflict.

Even if you don’t ask Siri anything, it may automatically identify plants, animals, and other elements found in screenshots. That behaviour is controlled by Automatic Visual Look Up, under Settings > General > Screen Capture.

macOS doesn’t yet apply Visual Intelligence to the FaceTime camera or Continuity camera.

Ask Siri about what Apple Vision Pro can see

If you use an Apple Vision Pro, visionOS 27 will be a delight, as it brings Visual Intelligence, as with an iPhone or iPad camera, to your augmented reality headgear. (All Apple Vision Pro models support Apple Intelligence.)

Here’s what you can do:

  • Ask Siri general questions.
  • Look at something and ask Siri about it. Visual Intelligence will know from context what you mean.
  • Gain access to the Siri app, as on other platforms.

Apps available in visionOS, like Safari, gain the same improvements as on other platforms, more typically mirroring those in Golden Gate.

Tags: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27
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How Siri AI Processing Works, On Your Device and in the Cloud

by Dave Johnson

Apple takes the stance that our data belongs to us, and they’re just the conduit by which it is passed and stored. Sadly, this makes them stand out in the current marketplace in which the user, and our data, is the product that is strip-mined and used in unwanted ways, often without our consent in the United States and many other countries. (And even in states, countries, and regions where that’s forbidden.)

All major chatbots harvest what we tell them in the spirit of training their models further. Some have privacy policies that limit what they extract, but it’s all kind of beyond our control, because the models run in their data centers, and whenever we interact with them, we’re sending them our data in the clear, often directly connected to our accounts. That means that over time, chatbots learn a great deal about us, and some of that becomes the basis for future responses to other people.

For Apple Intelligence, Apple said they brought the same privacy-minded approach to using large language model processing. The company started down this path in June 2024 and updated and revised how they approach it with Siri AI. This ensures Siri can maintain conversational context, provide analysis, and deliver information without compromising our privacy.

Apple uses a combination of on-device and Private Cloud Compute to provide this sort of privacy protection:

  • On-device models allow Siri AI to provide responses and Apple Intelligence to perform analysis or generation, which could include internet information requests and retrieving information from your data, without the chatbot component leaving your device.
  • Private Cloud Compute is a privacy-protecting framework in which only certain kinds of data from your device leave it to head to Apple’s cloud, where they use models derived from Google Gemini without exposing data of any kind to Gemini.

On-device vs. Private Cloud Compute

As Apple describes it, any task that can performed on your device will be, avoiding privacy issues altogether. However, for the vaguely described “more sophisticated requests” Apple must send some information to their cloud for processing. This cloud system is called Private Cloud Compute (PCC).

Apple enumerates many principles of PCC in their foundational 2024 announcement, but I can summarize this for you (without involving an AI):

  • Nobody but you should see your data, including Apple.
  • Apple has to have control and understanding of all components that handle data, and not have modes that let their staff access information in special cases, such as debugging modes.
  • The system must be designed to prevent targeted attacks that would let an attacker know exactly where an individual’s personal data was being processed and attempt to break in and exfiltrate information from it. _Apple_ doesn’t even know which server will handle the cloud portion of queries. And someone would have to overcome the system’s extreme global protections just to even begin trying to figure that out. Because of the architecture and security, it’s beyond exceedingly unlikely that a global exploit could work.
  • Nonetheless, a lot of companies claim they’re impenetrable and privacy-forward. Thus, Apple said outside researchers must be able to verify Apple’s claims.

Apple first built PCC using the same secure components that protect data on their hardware, including the Secure Enclave, which protects encryption keys and biometric information (among many other security bits), and Secure Boot, which prevents devices from starting up with compromised operating systems. This cloud is a collection of nodes that sound like Macs running a highly customized, secure version of macOS that’s stripped down to the necessary components and infused with the PCC sauce.

Data is sent from your device to PCC through end-to-end encrypted connections. Information transmitted is used for the user’s specific purpose (an “inferential request”) and is destroyed after the task is completed. This data can never be accessed by Apple staff or other people, though there are limits Apple does not advertise.

How Google Gemini powers Siri AI

To make Siri AI and expanded Apple Intelligence features work, Apple collaborated with Google to draw on the technologies behind Google’s Gemini model to add to the Apple Foundation Models (the Apple frameworks used for access to large language models). Apple is not handing off data to Google. Heavens, no! Rather, they are “collaborating”—ostensibly involving some form of licensing that isn’t disclosed.

Apple Foundation Models run both on-device and in new PCC nodes on Google Cloud, where Google runs Intel-based servers with Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs). (GPUs turned out to be ideal for AI operations.) Apple’s in-house PCC uses Apple silicon. The Intel CPU is paired with Google Titan, a security chip that verifies the server’s boot firmware before the CPU is allowed to run it, so that an infiltrator couldn’t slip in a compromised server image.

To achieve this, Apple ensures that every piece of hardware is cryptographically tracked—so another server couldn’t be slipped in, say—and that these new nodes have the same integrity as Apple’s own.

Tags: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27
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iOS 27: How to Use Intelligent Actions in Shortcuts

by Stacey Butler

The Shortcuts app, which lets you create and run sequences of actions ranging from simple (“open this app”) to massively complex (“fetch data from all these places, do some computations, and make a graph of the results”), has several features that involve Apple Intelligence.

Describe a shortcut

The Shortcuts user interface in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 was significantly overhauled to steer users away from manually creating shortcuts and toward its major new feature: the Apple Intelligence-powered “Describe a shortcut.” When you click or tap the plus button, you now see a big “What do you want your shortcut to do?” banner.

In the “Describe a shortcut” field at the bottom, type out what you’d like your shortcut to do. Apple Intelligence takes a first stab at it. You can try out the shortcut and, if it doesn’t work correctly, type what you need in the “Describe a change” field.

With any new or existing shortcut, you can select it and click the Edit button to bring up the full Shortcuts editor, which has been rearranged a bit and now includes a Pinned section.

Although the existing interface for creating Automations is still available, a new method can be used: when editing a shortcut, go to the Automation category and double-click or tap an automation (such as Time of Day or Message). This places it at the top of the shortcut so you can configure it when creating or editing a shortcut.

Use intelligent actions

Shortcuts has a series of actions that rely on Apple Intelligence features; these are called intelligent actions. When creating a shortcut, select Apple Intelligence in the list of apps to see the options, which include Create Image (using Image Playground) and half a dozen Write and Edit with Siri commands (Proofread Text, Adjust Tone of Text, and so on).

But the most flexible addition is the Use Model action. When you add it to a shortcut, you enter a request and can choose whether to process the request on your Mac (On-Device), using Apple’s Private Cloud Compute (Cloud or Cloud Pro, both of which offer a Use Broad World Knowledge checkbox, which lets them incorporate information found on the web), or via the ChatGPT extension.

Because you can feed text, audio, documents, and images into the action, and can channel its output to further actions, you can create elaborate workflows powered by Apple Intelligence. An example Apple offered was a student feeding this action both an audio recording of a lecture and notes taken during the class; Apple Intelligence was asked to summarize any missing points from the audio that hadn’t been captured in the notes.

Tags: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27
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The Siri AI Privacy Limits Apple Doesn’t Advertise

by Tyler Stephen

Apple has tried to cover all the bases to protect your privacy, including one the company often receives criticism for: providing enough information or access for independent outside security researchers or research companies to examine their security and privacy claims.

So far, the company has operated Apple Intelligence and PCC for two years, and only a single flaw was found by a researcher examining the disclosed components (the researcher was awarded Apple’s top security bounty). None have been discovered in any public-facing portions of the system. That doesn’t guarantee anything in the future, but it’s a good sign.

You should consider how Siri AI and Apple Intelligence affect your privacy, and what you might do about it:

  • Siri conversation syncing is secured with end-to-end encryption among your devices, like other sorts of data that are available exclusively on your devices, such as your conversations in Messages and entries in Passwords, and not via iCloud.com. If someone could access your Apple Account and to log into iCloud.com, they can’t see your Siri conversations. Someone would have to use your account information to add a device to your Apple Account set, or take over one of your devices.
  • You have to trust that Apple is making the right decisions. Their transparency helps, because you know that hundreds—maybe tens of thousands?—of people are looking for weaknesses in a system that will be used by hundreds of millions of people every day. But there’s nothing you can do, unless you’re a security researcher, to further that work. So it’s a bit of a binary trust/no trust option.
  • You don’t know when and if your personal data leaves your devices to use PCC—at Apple or in Google Cloud—so you can’t flip a switch to say “only use on-device models,” or “only use Apple’s PCC nodes when off-device.”
  • We don’t see a way that you can entirely disable Apple Intelligence, so you can’t per se prevent your information from being processed in the cloud. You can disable Siri, though you must disable it entirely to not use Siri AI—there’s no mode of Siri without Apple Intelligence on devices that support Apple Intelligence. Fully disabling Siri turns off all Apple Intelligence features related to Siri, likely covering a significant portion of off-device transactions involving more general information. You can turn off some features that rely on Apple Intelligence for individual apps, but not all such features.
  • While Google, Intel, and Nvidia are involved in the new Google Cloud-based portion of PCC, you aren’t being asked to trust how they manage privacy as such. Apple has built the secure stack that runs on the nodes. The risks here are firmware or hardware exploits that could compromise the non-Apple elements in Google Cloud. However, if Apple has done their work correctly, those exploits still wouldn’t allow targeting of individual data or exposure of that data. In particular, while each of those companies has security features in their hardware, Apple isn’t relying on those features for protection—they’re another layer before Apple’s secure stack is encountered by attackers.
  • Your data should be off-limits to government access just like any end-to-end encrypted data. The process Apple describes should prevent the company or any partner from having access to any of the keys required to access information inside a PCC transaction. However, it’s not yet clear how fully Apple will allow inspection of that process outside the software that runs it. That is, we don’t know whether they’ll allow testing of their cryptographic infrastructure.

Our frank conclusion is that if it’s intolerable to you to have any personal data potentially be processed outside of your devices, you will be unable to use iOS 27, iPadOS 27, or macOS 27 on Apple hardware that supports Apple Intelligence.

Otherwise—and we fall into this category—we rely on the information Apple has provided and non-affiliated researchers to keep them honest.

Tags: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27
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Siri AI Expressive Voice and Advanced Dictation Requirements

by Tyler Stephen

To use Siri AI’s expressive voice and take advantage of more advanced dictation, you need a newer device than Siri AI itself requires.

Extended requirements for Siri AI

All Apple hardware with an M3 or later chip and 12 GB or more of unified memory supports these features. If you’re not sure if your device hits that mark, here’s the list:

  • iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, or later
  • iPads with an M4 or later chip
  • Macs with an M4 or later M-series chip
  • Macs with an M3 chip and 12 GB or more unified memory, which excludes some configurations
  • Apple Vision Pro M5

Note: This list excludes the base configurations of the M4 iPad Pro. The 256 GB and 512 GB models carry 8 GB of unified memory, below the 12 GB minimum. The 1 TB and 2 TB M4 models have 16 GB and qualify, as do the M5 iPad Pros.

Siri AI voice settings

It has long been possible to choose among various male- and female-sounding voices and even different dialects, and Siri AI adds even more choices. But now, you can also adjust Siri’s speed and expressiveness. If you want a zippy, flat, “just the facts” response; a relaxed, cheerful response; or anything in between, you can go to Settings > Siri on iPhone or iPad, or System Settings > Siri on a Mac, and click or tap Voice. On this pane, you can select a base voice and then drag the Pace and Expressivity sliders as sample responses are played to dial in exactly the tone you prefer.

Dictation

Although Apple devices have had a Dictation feature for many years, starting in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, Apple offers an improved version of Dictation—assuming your device meets the system requirements. You’ll need an iPhone 17 Pro or Pro Max, iPhone Air, or later; an iPad with an M4 chip or later and at least 12 GB of RAM; a Mac with an M3 chip or later with at least 12 GB of RAM; or an M5 Vision Pro.

Assuming your device meets those requirements, you can go to Settings > General > Keyboard on iPhone or iPad, or System Settings > Keyboard on a Mac, and enable Advanced Dictation Preview, which applies systemwide. Apple says this version of Dictation offers improved accuracy and automatic punctuation, while keeping all processing on your device. We have not yet been able to test this feature to validate this claim.

Tags: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, visionOS 27
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The Apple Intelligence Accessibility Features in iOS 27

by Dave Johnson

Apple devices have long offered a wide range of features intended to make them easier to use for people who have difficulties with some aspect of the default interface—which doesn’t necessarily imply a disability, but also encompasses personal preference and a limited tolerance for Apple’s Liquid Glass shenanigans, for example.

Increasingly, these features have become more powerful by incorporating features from Apple Intelligence.

Apple appears to still be finishing and reconciling some Apple Intelligence accessibility features as we write this. Some terms mentioned in a May 2026 announcement by Apple and in the Learn More pages within Settings > Accessibility on an iPhone and iPad don’t match the interface element names or certain functionality. We’ll update this section as Apple finalizes these features and makes the documentation consistent.

VoiceOver

When enabled, VoiceOver describes what appears on screen when you move your pointer, tap, or change focus. It’s a way to interact with buttons and interface elements and have text that is part of the interface—such as labels under switches—read aloud. VoiceOver is a mode, not something you invoke: when you turn it on, all the options you set are in effect for as long as it’s enabled.

With iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, VoiceOver taps into Apple Intelligence to provide richer descriptions of visual material that wasn’t previously available. You can enable and configure this new feature in Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver > VoiceOver Recognition. You can also ask follow-up questions about what it describes.

We have not seen changes to VoiceOver in Golden Gate; it appears that the Apple Intelligence features are only available in iOS and iPadOS.

Magnifier

The Magnifier app lets you use your iPhone or iPad, or any camera connected to your Mac, to zoom in (or out) to see something better. That might mean zooming in to see more detail, turning on the flashlight to provide better lighting, or adjusting image processing, such as changing brightness or contrast. You can also use it to capture what you see as a photo, apply filters, and more.

It’s been enhanced in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 with an Apple Intelligence feature called Live Recognition that identifies what the camera is looking at. Use the Ask button to query Live Recognition. Type in a request, such as Read this aloud or Summarize this bill, and Siri provides the response. For example, point it at a bill and ask it what the bill’s total is.

Voice Control

In addition to Siri, your Mac, iPhone, and iPad have a feature called Voice Control, which lets you control your interface directly using voice commands—this goes far beyond actions you can take using Siri. You can effectively “click” or “tap” interface elements with your voice. It also includes context-based automatic text dictation, enabled whenever a page or field with a text insertion point is active.

While Voice Control has been in place for years, Apple Intelligence is now part of Voice Control. This addition lets you be much less precise in your descriptions of what to click, tap, or move. Describe what you want to do in natural language, and your device can then figure out what you intended.

To enable Voice Control, go to Settings > Accessibility > Voice Control on iPhone or iPad, or System Settings > Accessibility > Voice Control on a Mac, then turn on the Voice Control switch; turn it off to disable it. For help using the feature, you can click or tap (or ask your device to click or tap) Open Tutorial.

Accessibility Reader

Accessibility Reader is a feature designed to make text easier to read. After turning it on in Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak on iPhone or iPad, or System Settings > Accessibility > Read & Speak on a Mac, you can enable it on a Mac by pressing ⌘-Esc on a Mac, or on an iPhone or iPad using a Share menu command, an Accessibility Shortcut, or Control Center, almost anywhere you see text. (This doesn’t include text labels for controls and the like, but does include things like email messages, webpages, and open documents.)

When you do, a new window appears that’s a bit like Safari’s Reader view: it displays whatever text was in the foreground window but without graphics, links, or other distractions. You can use the controls in this window to change the magnification, font, color, line spacing, and so on, or even click the play button to have your device read the text aloud.

Apple Intelligence enables this feature to operate on more complex documents, provide a simpler view of structured information such as tables, and provide summaries and translations if you request them.

Generated captions

Your device automatically generates captions from any uncaptioned video you’re watching in Photos and other supported apps. (As of publication time, it works only on an iPhone or iPad.)

These automatic subtitles aren’t related to tvOS or TV app captioning.

An automated caption icon appears at the start of each onscreen subtitle to let you know that the caption was generated.

Tap or click the Caption button on the toolbar to change settings. For instance, you might want to adjust the subtitles’ size or hide them.

If captions already exist, you can have them automatically translated between supported languages.

Siri’s own dictation also improved in this release, covered in Siri AI expressive voice and Advanced Dictation requirements.

Tags: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27
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Live Translation in iOS 27: FaceTime, Phone, and Messages

by Moses Johnson

The FaceTime, Messages, and Phone apps offer real-time, two-way translation—as long as you and the person on the other side of the conversation are using languages your operating system knows about. And all translation occurs on your device, with nothing sent to Apple’s servers.

The other party or parties don’t need an Apple Intelligence-equipped device, but certain translation features will be limited, as described in the sections below.

Live Translation supports English (UK and U.S.), Chinese (Mandarin, simplified), Chinese (Mandarin, traditional), French (France), German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish (Spain) for FaceTime, Messages, and Phone; Messages also supports Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese. Presumably, more languages will be added over time. In Messages, since you’re communicating in text, Chinese (simplified) and Chinese (traditional) apply to multiple forms of Chinese.

Live Translation works quite similarly in FaceTime and Phone, so we tackle those together, then explain how to use it with Messages.

Live Translation in FaceTime and Phone

Live Translation of audio calls may be one of the most remarkable new features in FaceTime and Phone. With Live Translation enabled, two people speaking in different supported languages can hear and read real-time translations of what the other is saying in a language they don’t understand or know well.

Live Translation appeared as a beta in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26. Apple removed the beta label in version 27.

Here’s how to enable Live Translation on a call, including a call using the Phone app:

  1. After starting a FaceTime audio or video call or a regular phone call in Phone, make sure you are in full-screen mode on an iPad or iPhone—that’s the only place you can select Live Translation. On a Mac, FaceTime or Phone resizes as needed.
  2. Tap or click the More button and choose Live Translation.
  3. The Live Translation dialog preselects the From language as the most recent used (if any), and uses your device’s language of choice for the To option. You can use the popup menus to change these.
  4. Your device must download a translation library the first time you use a language. After selecting the options from From or To, wait until the Downloading Language message changes before proceeding.
  5. Tap or click Start Translation.

Either party can enable Live Translation and gain the benefit. The translation is spoken on the conversation so both parties can hear it.

You can disable Live Translation by tapping the Translating Language menu and choosing Stop Translation, or tapping the More button and tapping Stop to the right of the Live Translation menu item.

Live Translation in Messages

For quite a while, you could touch and hold a message (iPhone/iPad) or select its text (Mac) and choose Translate. This option remains available. Now, Live Translation can also translate an entire conversation in real time inline in Messages.

With Live Translation enabled, when you touch and hold a message on an iPhone or iPad, you’re prompted to choose between Translate This Message and Translate Conversation. Choosing Translate This Message opens a translation panel.

To enable Live Translation, either touch and hold a message on an iPhone or iPad and choose Translate Conversation, or on any device, tap or click the avatar at the top of the conversation and enable Automatically Translate. Pick the language to translate from the pop-up menu. A download icon appears next to any language that hasn’t yet had its translation library downloaded to your device.

Choose Manage Languages to load translation libraries you might need now or in the future. You can also remove downloaded libraries.

You can then choose a language for Translate To if the one shown isn’t your preferred language. By default, both the original text and the translated version appear for each translated message.

As you converse, messages are translated as they’re received. You can use the pop-up menu above the message field to choose just your chosen Translate To language or to stop translation. You can also use the conversation info pane, where you can choose Off from the Automatically Translate pop-up menu.

Even better, you can enable translation on one side and it works on both. In our testing, one participant had an Apple Intelligence iPhone with Live Translation enabled for the conversation, while the other was on an iPhone 11 and could not turn the feature on—they still got the benefit.

Tags: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27
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What’s New in Mail and Messages in iOS 27

by Stacey Butler

Apple’s Mail and Messages apps both offer a variety of Apple Intelligence features, and there’s a fair amount of overlap between the two, even if the implementation is a bit different. (Live Translation in Messages is covered separately.)

Use Smart Reply

Mail and Messages both offer smart replies, which are brief suggestions of what you might want to say that you can click or tap to save a few keystrokes or taps. Apple Intelligence looks for anything in the text of the message you’re replying to that could lead to a simple reply.

Mail offers a suggestion, if it has one, when you click to begin composing your reply. On a Mac, a little menu pops up; on an iPhone or iPad, the suggestions appear on the QuickType bar. Click or tap one of the words or phrases, and Mail expands it into a complete suggested response, which you can then accept as is or edit to taste. (Based on what we’ve seen, you will almost certainly want to edit it to sound more like you.)

Click Done to accept the response, or Revert to restore whatever you had originally. If you like the prewritten response, you can tell Apple by clicking or tapping the thumbs up button; if not, you can click or tap the thumbs down button and fill out a form explaining what was wrong. On a Mac, these buttons appear only when you hover over the Smart Reply bar; on an iPhone or iPad, they appear automatically on the QuickType bar.

In Messages, Apple Intelligence looks for questions or comments that could potentially result in a common response. Yes/no questions fall into this category, as do questions reminding you of appointments, confirming upcoming meetings, and making simple requests. (We’re sure there are many others, but there’s no definitive list.)

As in Mail, when Apple Intelligence comes up with a likely response, it’s displayed in a little pop-up control that looks just like the ones used for autocorrect on a Mac or on the QuickType bar on an iPhone or iPad. To accept one of the suggestions, click it; to dismiss them, click the close button. (You can also simply ignore the prompts and type as you normally would.)

Matching your style?

According to Apple, if you use the Smart Reply feature in Mail or Messages, the suggested replies adopt your writing style, punctuation, and tone. We tried this several times, and all we can say is…it did not. One of us would be ashamed to send any of these “smart” replies, because he does not write like an AI robot, and anyone who knows him would instantly see that something is off. (If you do write like an AI robot, maybe you’ll have better luck with this than we did.)

We urge you to double-check all Smart Replies before sending a message. We’ve seen cases in which the suggested text was incorrect or misleading, regardless of the style.

If you find Smart Replies to be not-so-smart or just plain annoying, you can disable them altogether, but Apple doesn’t make it easy. On a Mac, you can find the control in System Settings > Keyboard. Click Edit next to Input Sources and then turn off “Show suggested replies.” On an iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > Siri > App Access > Mail, then turn off Show in App; do the same thing for Messages. (In other words, as Douglas Adams might have put it, it’s on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard.”)

Take action in other apps with suggestions

Suggestions may appear when Mail or Messages notices something in a conversation that you may want to take action on, such as adding a calendar event or searching for a photo.

Use improved search in Mail

Apple says that Mail in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 has improved, offering more relevant search results. When you type in the Search field, a banner appears telling you that Mail looks for meaning beyond the specific words you enter, presumably using Apple Intelligence.

In our tests, we were unable to get any expansive searches to pull up results that didn’t include words in the search phrase. Perhaps the improvements will become more evident later.

See Priority Messages in Mail

Apple Intelligence attempts to identify especially important messages and bubbles them up to the top of your Mail inbox. Apple says this applies to “time-sensitive messages” such as invitations and flight check-in reminders.

In our testing, this feature hasn’t been terribly helpful. It has identified messages that weren’t in any sense urgent while ignoring some that were. Unfortunately, it’s a black box; you can neither see nor influence what factors Apple Intelligence takes into account when assigning a message “Priority” status.

You can, however, turn off this feature: on a Mac, choose View > Show Priority Messages to uncheck it, or do the same using the More menu on the toolbar; on an iPhone or iPad, tap More > Show Priority. Note, however, that if Mail Categories is enabled (that is, Show Categories is selected on the same menu), the Show Priority Messages command is available only when the Primary category is selected.

This AI “priority” feature has nothing to do with the optional Low/Normal/High priority you can assign a message using the Message > Set Priority submenu.

Summarize Mail messages and threads

At the top of each message or thread is the word Summarize, with an icon to its left. Click or tap that, wait a few seconds, and a summary of the message appears. The accuracy of the summaries varies greatly, so don’t assume they are correct or contain everything of importance from the message.

If you click or tap the little pop-up menu button (Mac) or the More button (iPhone or iPad) in the preview, you can choose either Looks Good (to tell Apple the results were useful) or Something Isn’t Right. With the latter choice, a form appears in which you can fill in details about how the summary didn’t meet your needs and send the information to Apple to help them improve summaries in the future.

There’s also a second, simpler type of summary, which appears in the message preview (the little snippet of the message you see beneath the subject in the message list), right after a Summary icon. This is an attempt to briefly explain what the message is about, without summarizing the entire thing.

Although preview summaries are enabled by default, you can turn them off if you like. On a Mac, go to Mail > Settings > Viewing and uncheck Summarize Message Previews. On an iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > Apps > Mail and turn off Summarize Message Previews.

Tags: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27
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