Anyone can try it by enrolling their Apple Account in the developer program, though beta software can be unstable. Back up your iPhone to a Mac or PC first, or wait for the public beta.
Siri AI Starts Doing the Chores
The biggest shift is how far Siri AI now reaches. It can unsubscribe you from mailing lists in Mail, clear your browsing history in Safari, and handle tasks across Calendar, Files, Journal, Maps and Photos, such as organizing files, planning events or managing photos. You can ask Siri AI about new actions inside each supported app. A new Developer Preview lets any app plug into Siri AI through App Intents, and language support grows to include Traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, Turkish and Norwegian. On iPad, Siri Mode arrives in the Camera app so you can ask about your surroundings.
Audio Intelligence is the more contentious piece. Live Rewind transcribes the last 15 seconds of a conversation when you double-click the Apple Watch crown, and Siri Recap delivers daily conversation summaries. Both were announced with watchOS 27 and drew privacy concerns. Apple says the system never records or stores audio, does not identify speakers, and deletes text results unless you save them. The company lays out its approach on its website.
A Health App Rebuilt Around Longevity
The redesigned Health app, first trialed in the iOS 27.2 beta, returns with Insights and Longevity tabs. Insights surfaces recent Activity Rings, heart rate and sleep scores, and Apple Intelligence uses that data to offer Personal Guidance. Longevity scores health across seven categories, including heart health, sleep and mental wellbeing, and adds a Health Age figure that compares your metrics with your actual age. It draws on Apple Watch data and iPhone camera fitness and movement assessments. Fitness+ also adds Gym Strength, which builds personalized four-week strength plans on iPhone and iPad.
Safari, StandBy and the Smaller Changes
The rest of the beta is a long list of smaller additions:
- Safari: vertical tabs, plus Adaptive Dark Mode, which forces a dark theme onto sites that lack one
- StandBy: features first seen on the iPhone Duo reach every iOS 27 iPhone, including Analog, Digital, Calendar and Weather faces and a Photos face that supports Shared Albums, with multiple versions of each face
- iPhone Duo: Apple’s first foldable gets Reachability, which brings content closer for one-handed use, and the keyboard swaps the positions of the emoji and number keys
- Control Center: quick switching between VPNs instead of a simple on/off toggle
- Apple Music: Selfie Sing records karaoke videos with voice modification you can share
- Freeform: custom shape generation and image tools, limited to Apple Creator Studio subscribers
- China: Apple Intelligence goes live with Live Translation and Genmoji, though Siri AI and other advanced iOS 27 features stay unavailable, and early earthquake warnings arrive through a partnership with the China Earthquake Networks Center
- Australia: Telstra gains RCS support
AirPods Quietly Got Better Too
Beyond its AI features and an improved CarPlay, iOS 27 itself brought meaningful upgrades for AirPods, and most of them do not require new hardware.
- Adaptive Audio: you can now tune the balance between noise cancellation and transparency, leaning toward transparency in a noisy grocery store and toward noise reduction on a quiet evening trip
- Custom equalizer: adjust low, mid and high frequencies from AirPods settings with a live visual animation. It is not a studio tool, but it is enough for personal taste
- Workouts without a watch: expanded GymKit support lets an iPhone held near an NFC tag on an elliptical, stair stepper, treadmill or bike track time, distance, calories, elevation and pace, so you do not need an Apple Watch. This one is exclusive to AirPods Pro 3 because of their in-ear heart rate sensors
Adaptive Audio and the equalizer work on any AirPods with an H2 chip: AirPods Pro 3, AirPods Pro 2, AirPods Max 2, AirPods 5 and AirPods 4 with ANC. ZDNET‘s Jada Jones says the changes make AirPods a deeper part of my daily life
. If you want them, update to iOS 27.
Hashlytics Take
Audio Intelligence has drawn most of the privacy attention, but the quieter change in this beta matters more. Siri AI can now unsubscribe you from lists, clear your Safari history and work through your files, and the Developer Preview opens that same access to any app built on App Intents. That moves the debate from what Apple’s assistant hears to what it is allowed to do on your behalf. Apple’s account of Audio Intelligence, no stored audio and no speaker identification, is still Apple’s own statement, and the beta gives testers a chance to check it. The permission scope of cross-app Siri actions deserves the same scrutiny before the public release.
Follow Hashlytics on Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn , Telegram and X to Get Instant Updates