Biggest announcements to expect from Apple's WWDC 2026

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off in days, and after a year widely regarded as a missed step for Apple Intelligence, this is the event where the company needs to prove it can compete and honour promises it first made in 2024.

Since Apple announced the event, several rumours have been surfacing across the tech industry, ranging from new product launches to the long-awaited AI upgrades.

New Siri powered by Google Gemini

The big news is the much-awaited revamp of Siri. When Apple's attempt to boost Siri with new AI features hit a snag, Google's Gemini apparently filled in to give Siri a reboot. Now, the upgraded Siri can carry contextually rich chats, understand complicated language, and operate across different apps easily without you having to keep giving it prompts.

With iOS 27, users will get to pick their own AI chatbot. Apple had been locked into using ChatGPT for two years, but things are about to change. Reports say there'll be a new "Extension" feature that lets you link Siri and Apple Intelligence with other AI chatbots like Claude or Gemini.

AI health coach and smarter image editing

Apple's Intelligence is set to get two useful updates too. A health coach feature previously rumoured for iOS 26, named "Health Plus", will now appear in a more restrained version. It'll focus on assessing fitness, giving training tips, and suggesting wellness programmes, not exactly diving into anything close to diagnosing ailments.

Creatively, some new image editing tools, including Extend, Enhance, and Reframe, are said to be hitting iOS 27.

Performance, customisation, and app upgrades

Apple is reportedly bringing new innovative features with iOS 27, just like Mac OS X Snow Leopard in 2009. Engineers are busy trimming down the excess, fixing bugs, and boosting overall performance across iOS, macOS, and watchOS. Seems like the idea is to treat all these systems as parts of one big, cohesive unit.

Liquid Glass, Apple’s slightly divisive translucent design language, is still coming along for the ride. But there’s a new system-wide opacity slider, so annoyed users should finally get more control than that buried accessibility toggle even tries to do today.

Apple Wallet is expected to pick up receipt scanning for bill splitting, plus a physical-to-digital pass converter, which sounds like it’ll save time without the usual fuss.