Apple is preparing a major Siri rewrite for iOS 27, and the plan goes well beyond a fresh coat of paint. The assistant is expected to behave more like a chatbot and AI agent, with a new Dynamic Island interface, a dedicated Siri app, and wider support for third-party AI services.
That is Apple catching up the hard way. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have already taught users to expect conversational answers, not just timers and basic web queries, so Siri’s old voice-first shell has started to look quaint. If Apple wants Apple Intelligence to feel like a platform, Siri has to stop acting like a glorified shortcut.
iOS 27 Siri redesign brings a Dynamic Island front end
According to Bloomberg, activating Siri with the wake word or the iPhone side button will bring up a pill-shaped animation in the Dynamic Island. Ask a question or trigger a task, and Siri will surface a transparent results card; swipe on that, and you get a chat-style conversation view that looks closer to iMessage than the old floating orb routine.
Apple is also building a dedicated Siri app for the first time. It will store prior conversations, let people start new chats, and surface summaries of past exchanges in a grid of rectangles, alongside a search bar and a ”+” button. The app is also expected to accept images and documents, plus either typed input or voice. That is the sort of basic, obvious stuff Apple should have had years ago, which is probably why it is finally getting it.
Search or Ask becomes the new default gesture
Apple is reportedly adding a system-wide ”Search or Ask” interface that appears when users swipe down from the top center of the screen in any app. The prompt will sit in the Dynamic Island and work a lot like Spotlight Search, except with more advanced results and extra data pulled from apps.
Responses will reportedly include bullet points and large images, which is a sensible move because chatbots are only useful when the answer is easier to scan than the question was to ask. Siri will still be the default option, but Apple plans to let users switch to other assistants such as ChatGPT or Gemini from that same search field. That kind of choice is awkward for Apple, but it is also a quiet admission that users will not stay loyal to a single bot just because Cupertino says so.
- Trigger Siri with the wake word or the side button
- See a pill-shaped Dynamic Island animation
- Swipe into a chat-like results view
- Use the dedicated Siri app to revisit older chats
- Type, speak, or upload files and images
Apple Intelligence is getting less Apple-specific
Another notable shift is Apple’s plan to let users choose third-party AI services as the default for Apple Intelligence features such as Writing Tools and Image Playground. That would push Apple Intelligence further beyond its current ChatGPT relationship and make it feel less like a one-partner arrangement. It also shows Apple is willing to lean on rivals where its own models still trail.
Image Playground is getting a redesign too, with fewer controls, a ”describe a change” editing option, and a cleaner gallery of older creations. Apple has also been testing models that generate more lifelike images, so the app may not stay a toy for much longer. The company is said to be changing the Camera app, Photos, Wallet, and Shortcuts as well, with possible tweaks to Liquid Glass.
Apple is expected to show iOS 27 at WWDC 2026 on June 8 and release it in September. The bigger question is not whether Siri will look better, but whether Apple can make the new version feel fast and useful enough to justify putting its assistant at the center of the iPhone again.