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, Spotify and others cannot connect to the new Siri until developers update them, which cannot happen before iOS 27's full release in autumn 2025.
• iOS 27 also speeds up app launches, AirDrop file transfers and Photos searches, 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 running it since early June.

The broader iOS 27 update is light on flashy new tricks. Apple focused instead on speed and polish: faster app launches, quicker photo searches, snappier AirDrop transfers. The Messages app now supports in-line replies and end-to-end encryption for RCS messages. Liquid Glass, Apple's interface design style, 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 goes and 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. Look at an email with several meeting times and ask Siri to add them to your calendar; it pulls out the dates and creates the events.

In one test, 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 is the kind of thing that previously took ten minutes of copying and pasting.

The frustrations are real, though. 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. These are small word-choice problems, but they break the promise of talking to your phone in plain language.

The bigger constraint is that right now the new Siri only connects to Apple's own apps: Messages, Mail, Photos, Calendar, Reminders and Notes. If your contacts text you on Telegram, or your to-do list lives in Notion, Siri cannot 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 cannot push those updates to users until the full iOS 27 release this autumn.

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