Apple opened a Developer Preview for Siri AI integration to all app developers on 3 November, News.Az reported. Available in the iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3, macOS 27.3 and visionOS 27.3 betas, the preview lets developers connect their apps to the assistant through App Intents, so Siri AI can draw on an app’s content and carry out its actions. Apple has been extending Siri AI across its operating systems and third-party apps; this preview opens that integration to any developer.
Key points
- Developers can use App Intents to bring app content and actions into Siri AI in four 27.3 operating-system betas.
- Apple is introducing skills that can combine several actions, and broader access to entries in Spotlight’s semantic index.
- Apple expects the first customer releases in a few months and App Store submissions to open in the spring.
App Intents brings apps into Siri AI
App Intents is the route Apple has chosen for the connection. An app can make its content and actions available to Siri AI, rather than requiring every request to begin inside the app. Apple says the preview lets apps use Siri AI’s understanding of personal context, what is on screen and requests phrased in ordinary language. Apple says Siri AI could carry out an app action when asked for help in the user’s own words.
Checking a delivery could begin with a request in everyday words, and Siri AI could use an app action to retrieve the relevant information. That would depend on the action the app makes available through App Intents and on the assistant interpreting the request. Apple also gives booking a reservation and placing an order as examples of actions developers could build for this route.
Thousands of developers have already built integrations with Siri, according to Apple’s account published by News.Az. Those integrations cover requests such as getting directions, managing a to-do list, sending a message and returning to an audiobook. The Developer Preview extends that route to any app seeking to bring its content and actions into Siri AI, rather than describing an integration limited to those existing uses.
Siri AI skills combine app actions
Apple is also introducing skills for requests that involve more than one action. A developer can teach Siri AI to combine several actions into a single experience, according to the account published by News.Az. The distinction is practical: making one app action available gives the assistant one thing it can do, while a skill gives it a way to put actions together when a request calls for several of them.
Another change concerns Spotlight’s semantic index, which holds entries that the system can find by their meaning. Apple says Siri AI can now surface any entity in that index, including one that does not fit an existing schema — the predefined shape used to describe an entry. For an app with content outside those shapes, the change broadens what the assistant can bring forward in response to a request.
These are capabilities available to developers in a beta preview. Their use in an app would still depend on what content and actions its developer chooses to expose. Apple’s examples describe possible requests, while its account of skills describes a way for developers to build multi-action experiences; neither is a measurement of how reliably Siri AI completes them in customer use.
The 27.3 preview precedes customer releases
The iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3, macOS 27.3 and visionOS 27.3 betas carry the preview. It follows Apple’s expansion of Siri AI to five more languages in its 27.2 updates. Apple Intelligence testing in China is also set for 4 November with iOS 27.3, as AI Affairs previously reported, although Siri AI is excluded from that rollout.
Siri AI is available in English, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, Breaking the News reported. It is currently unavailable in the European Union on iOS, iPadOS and watchOS. Those limits matter for apps built around a request to the assistant: access to the Developer Preview across the four betas does not put Siri AI in every market or on every device.
Apple describes the preview as “early access” ahead of its first customer releases, which it expects to begin in a few months. Apple expects submissions of apps using the integration to the App Store to open in the spring.
