Apple announced its next major iOS update, iOS 27, at WWDC 2026 on Monday. Apple is highlighting performance and design improvements as a major feature, and the update will be supported all the way back to the iPhone 11.
A big change is an opacity slider for Liquid Glass. Liquid Glass was a major facelift introduced with iOS 26, bringing glassy design elements and adding new animations across the iPhone’s software. From the jump, Liquid Glass had some legibility issues, but Apple tweaked things ahead of releasing the OS publicly in September. With iOS 27, thanks to the new slider, you’ll be able to adjust just how glassy things like tab bars will be.
iOS 27 will also feature the “next generation of Apple Intelligence,” which has a “bold new architecture” and an “all-new Siri.” As part of the new Apple Intelligence features, your devices will have awareness of what’s on your screen.
This new update will be Apple’s next crack at Apple Intelligence features, which were first announced at WWDC 2024. Apple is well behind companies like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic, which have all been steadily building out their AI chatbots. At WWDC 2024, Apple announced a revamped AI-powered Siri, but nearly a year later, in March 2025, the company said it would be delaying the upgraded Siri because it was taking “longer than we thought” to deliver the updates. It recently settled a lawsuit over failing to deliver many of those abilities. And earlier this year, it announced that it would be picking Google’s Gemini AI for its big Siri upgrade.
