iOS 27 is here: 10 new features to try out
Today is the official release date for iOS 27. This means it’s available for all owners of an iPhone 11 or later. iOS 27 introduces Siri AI, numerous new Apple Intelligence features, improvements to Liquid Glass, and performance optimizations that will noticeably speed up your iPhone.
Performance improvements
Apple has sped up a long list of features in iOS 27, and you’ll notice it immediately when you download the software. Everything feels faster than in iOS 26. Animations are smoother, apps launch faster, and AirDrop transfers are completed more quickly.
You’ll notice improvements when taking photos, opening the keyboard, accessing the app library, and switching between home screen pages. Your iMessages will sync more accurately across devices, messages will be reliably sent and automatically redelivered, and your iPhone will switch more smoothly between Wi-Fi and cellular networks.
Most of the new features in iOS 27 require Apple Intelligence and an iPhone 15 Pro or later. However, the background improvements are available on all iPhones, so even older models will feel smoother.
Siri AI
Siri AI is the new version of Siri. It’s similar to ChatGPT or Claude Siri in iOS 26 and supports interactive conversations. Siri AI can do many of the same things as other AI chatbots, but unlike other AI options, it has private access to your messages, emails, photos, apps, and other personal data to handle a wider range of tasks. Siri can also search the web and thus answer all kinds of queries.
Siri can be activated with a wake word, by swiping down from the center of the screen to ask Siri a question, by chatting with Siri in the Siri app, or by pressing the side button to activate Siri.
New Siri features in iOS 27:
- Create home automations with a command like “Lock all doors at midnight”.
- Find specific emails, messages, photos, images, links, files, and other documents that have been sent to you. You can filter your search by person, time, location, and much more.
- Delete files, emails, photos, or messages.
- Add all the ingredients of a recipe from a website to a shopping list.
- Based on the information the system has about you, activities, places and restaurants that you might like will be recommended.
- Look at something on your screen, for example a website, and answer questions about it.
- Answer general knowledge questions.
- Add information about people to the Contacts app on request, such as birthdays or additional phone numbers.
- Find passwords for websites and apps that are saved in the password app.
Visual Intelligence
Visual intelligence is now available in the camera app and can be accessed by swiping to a new Siri mode, which is available as an alternative to the photo and video modes.
There are new features for visual intelligence, and Siri can, for example, tell you the nutritional value of a food you want to eat, or calculate how much everyone owes based on a photo of a receipt.
Write with Siri
In iOS 27, Siri can generate texts from scratch. The system-wide “Type with Siri” feature is accessible via the keyboard. Siri assists you with writing, gives you feedback on your texts, changes tone and phrasing, and can even adopt your own writing style by analyzing your emails and messages.
Your iPhone automatically suggests grammar corrections in addition to spelling corrections.
Clean up photos
The cleanup tool in the Photos app, which removes unwanted objects from images, has been significantly improved in iOS 27. It removes unwanted objects more cleanly and fills in missing elements more convincingly.
There are also new tools for expanding and re-editing images, which allow the edges of a photo to be extended using AI and the perspective or composition of an image to be changed.
Set Liquid Glass
There’s a new Liquid Glass slider that lets you adjust the transparency of your buttons, toolbars, and menus. You can find it in Settings under “Appearance” and then “Liquid Glass”.
safari
In Safari, you can create custom extensions with natural language commands. This is helpful if you want to perform a specific action but no suitable extension is available. Here are some example suggestions from Apple:
- Create a quote for the current website and copy it to my clipboard.
- Create a 3-minute focus timer for the page.
- The minimum font size should be set to 14 pt.
- Switch to pirate language.
- Design websites in the style of the 90s with bold colors and fonts
- Draw me a different flower every time I open a new tab.
- When you tap website elements, they are highlighted and their dimensions are displayed.
- I want to switch to the design mode of a website so that I can edit the content.
Safari can also automatically categorize your tabs and monitor websites to notify you of changes.
Home App
Do you use HomeKit Secure Video cameras? They now support 2K and 4K recording. There’s also a new AI feature that provides text descriptions of what’s happening in your home, and a natural language video search option.
For AI features, an iCloud+ subscription with 2 TB of storage is required for one camera and a higher-tier subscription for multiple cameras, but not for 4K streaming.
AirPods EQ
If you’ve ever wanted to customize the sound of your AirPods, you can now do so with the new customization options that let you fine-tune the mids, highs, and lows. The custom equalizer is available for AirPods 4, AirPods 5, AirPods Pro 2, AirPods Pro 3, and AirPods Max 2.
Abbreviations
If you find the Shortcuts app complicated, it’s easier to use in iOS 27. You can tell the app what you want to achieve with a shortcut, and it will create it using AI. You can then refine it with further instructions in natural language or edit it manually.
How to install iOS 27
iOS 27 can be installed just like any other iOS update. Open the Settings app, go to “General,” tap “Software Update,” and wait until the update to iOS 27 appears.
Apple will also send out prompts to update to the new operating system.
More information about iOS 27
A complete list of changes can be found in our iOS 27 changelog.
