Apple's Revamped Siri Arrives in iOS 27 Public Beta. Does It Finally Work?

Key points

• Apple released the first public beta of iOS 27 in summer 2025, making the new Siri available as an opt-in preview.
• The revamped Siri can read what is on your screen, search the web, and take actions across Apple apps without you opening them manually.
• Third-party apps such as Telegram and Spotify cannot connect to the new Siri until developers update them, which can't happen before iOS 27's full release in autumn 2025.
• IOS 27 also speeds up app launches and AirDrop file transfers, and adds encryption to RCS messages, the newer text-message standard Android and iPhone users share.

Apple's iOS 27 public beta landed this week, and the headline feature is a rebuilt Siri that works more like a capable assistant and less like a confused search box. The Verge AI has been testing it since early June.

The broader update is light on new tricks. Apple focused on speed and polish: faster app launches, quicker photo searches, snappier AirDrop transfers. Messages now supports in-line replies and end-to-end encryption for RCS messages. Liquid Glass, Apple's interface design language, got sharper edges and better text contrast. Good news for anyone on an older iPhone.

But the main event is the new Siri.

Does the new Siri actually work?

In most everyday tests, yes, noticeably better than before. The key shift is that instead of opening an app and telling it what you want, you tell Siri what you want and it finds the right app or information itself.

A simple example: during testing, a reviewer asked Siri which band was playing last at a local concert. Siri checked the event page, searched the web and gave the correct answer in seconds. No tab-switching, no Instagram scrolling.

Siri can also read whatever is currently on your screen, a feature Apple calls onscreen awareness. Point it at a restaurant address and ask for directions; it reads the address and opens Maps. On the first day of testing at Apple's developer conference, saying "add my WWDC briefings to my calendar" prompted Siri to scan an inbox, parse six separate events with correct times, and add them all at once. That's the kind of thing that previously took ten minutes of copying and pasting.

Should you worry about the frustrations?

They're real. Ask Siri to "route" you somewhere and it often does nothing. Say "direct" me instead, and it works. Ask it to remind you to buy tickets "when they go on sale" while looking at a concert page, and it may just create a reminder called "buy tickets when they go on sale" rather than linking to the page. Small word-choice problems, but they break the promise of plain-language control.

The bigger constraint is that the new Siri currently connects only to Apple's own apps: Messages, Mail, Photos, Calendar and Reminders. If your contacts text you on Telegram, or your to-do list lives in Notion, Siri can't see any of it.

Third-party app makers need to rebuild their apps to expose their data to Siri, a process Apple calls adding "entities" (the types of content an app holds, like a playlist or a recipe) and "intents" (the actions Siri can take, like play or delete). Developers can start that work now against the iOS 27 software kit, but they can't push those updates to users until the full iOS 27 release this autumn.

Watch this space carefully: Apple is asking developers to update their apps not to improve their own app's experience, but to improve Siri's. That's a harder sell, and it's the real test of whether the ecosystem catches up.

For people who live almost entirely inside Apple apps, the new Siri already feels like a meaningful step forward. Everyone else will find that autumn is the real starting line.