Apple has opened public beta testing for iOS 27, giving millions of iPhone users their first real look at what the company is calling its most significant Siri overhaul to date.
The beta is now live through Apple’s Beta Software Program for eligible devices, letting everyday users outside the developer community get hands-on time with the software months before its official release later this year.
The rollout covers more than just iPhones. Apple has simultaneously opened public betas for iPadOS 27, macOS 27 Golden Gate, watchOS 27, tvOS 27, HomePod Software 27, and new AirPods firmware, making this one of the broader beta launches the company has run in recent years.
Siri is the headline act. The rebuilt assistant can now hold proper conversations, understand follow-up questions, and carry context from one request to the next without the user having to repeat themselves.
So instead of treating every prompt as a fresh start, Siri can now handle chained requests: find a photo from three summers ago, pull up the email someone sent about it, and draft a reply, all in one flowing exchange.
Apple has also introduced a standalone Siri app while keeping the assistant embedded across the system, so users can still trigger it the usual ways but now have a dedicated space to continue longer conversations across devices.
The on-screen awareness is one of the more practically useful additions. Siri can now read what’s on a user’s display and act on it directly, summarising a message thread, adding a calendar event mentioned in a conversation, or answering a question about something being viewed without the user needing to copy, paste, or switch apps.
Apple describes it as Siri understanding personal context better, which in practice means the assistant is finally getting closer to the kind of usefulness that was promised years ago.
Beyond Siri, the update touches most of Apple’s core apps. Photos picks up Spatial Reframing, an improved Clean Up tool, and image expansion.
Safari now auto-groups related tabs and adds a “Notify Me” option that pings users when a watched page changes, useful for tracking price drops or restocks.
Messages and Mail both get new writing tools; Calendar can now create events from plain text descriptions; and the Passwords app has been improved to detect weak or compromised credentials and walk users through replacing them.
Visual Intelligence is also expanding to more devices, letting users search, identify objects, pull nutritional information, and interact with content through the camera or screenshots on Mac and iPad.
For calls, a new Call Context feature can surface relevant information from emails or apps during a conversation, and Live Translation handles real-time translation across messages, FaceTime captions, and phone calls.
Regarding privacy, Apple says most processing occurs on-device via Apple Intelligence, with heavier tasks handled by Private Cloud Compute.
The company maintains that personal data is not stored or accessed during that process. However, users will need to take that on trust, as they have with previous Apple Intelligence claims.
One thing worth flagging before anyone rushes to install it: this is still unfinished software. Bugs, battery drain, and app compatibility issues are par for the course at this stage.
Anyone who depends on their phone for work or anything time-sensitive is better off waiting for the stable release. For everyone else who wants to be first, the beta program is open, and the new Siri is ready for testing.
