Apple's New Siri Finally Understands What's on Your Screen
Apple's relaunched Siri finally understands what's on your screen, drafts content across apps, and syncs conversations across devices. Beta rollout began 14 September.
Apple has relaunched Siri, and for the first time it actually knows what's happening on your screen. Siri AI, part of the next generation of Apple Intelligence, began rolling out as a beta on 14 September and represents the biggest change to the assistant since it launched in 2011.
The overhaul arrives after a rocky stretch for Apple's AI ambitions. The company had originally promised a more personalised, context-aware Siri as part of its 2024 Apple Intelligence rollout, only to delay the feature repeatedly as it struggled to get the underlying models working reliably. That delay left Apple looking increasingly out of step with Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT, both of which shipped comparable on-device and cross-app awareness well ahead of Siri. This release is Apple's clearest answer yet to that criticism.
What It Can Actually Do Now
Spec callout: Personal context awareness across messages, emails and photos, onscreen awareness for questions and actions tied to whatever's currently visible, and Visual Intelligence for image understanding now extended to iPad, Mac and Apple Vision Pro.
Siri can now draft and edit content across apps in a personalised tone, offers more expressive, customisable voices and improved dictation, and takes systemwide actions inside third-party apps including WhatsApp, Audible, Outlook and Notability.
The onscreen awareness feature works by letting Siri read the content currently displayed on a user's screen, whether that's a webpage, an email or a photo, and answer questions or take actions based on it without the user needing to copy, describe or switch context first. It's the single capability Apple's own marketing leans on hardest, and reasonably so: it's the one feature here that genuinely changes the shape of an everyday interaction with the phone rather than just making an existing one faster.
A new dedicated Siri app syncs conversations across iPhone, Mac, iPad, Apple Watch and Vision Pro, so a conversation started on one device can continue on another.
Where and When
The English-language beta arrived first, with French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish support following in October. It runs on iPhone 16 and later, iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, iPad mini with the A17 Pro chip, M1 and later iPads and Macs, Apple Vision Pro, Apple Watch Series 9 and later, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 and later. It isn't yet available in the EU or China, and isn't offered to users under 13. Server-dependent features carry daily usage caps, with a premium tier planned down the line.
The EU exclusion is a continuation of Apple's ongoing friction with European regulators over the Digital Markets Act, which has already delayed several Apple Intelligence features in the region compared to their US rollout. Apple has not given a firm timeline for when EU users might see Siri AI, only that it's working through the relevant compliance requirements.
The Rest of the Update
Apple Intelligence's broader update includes new photo editing tools (Spatial Reframing, Extend, Clean Up), photorealistic generation in Image Playground, better tab organisation and a Notify Me feature in Safari, upgrades to Mail and Messages, a redesigned Health app, and new Audio Intelligence features on Apple Watch including Sound Recognition, Live Rewind and a Siri Recap.
Verdict: The onscreen awareness is the feature that actually changes how you'd use it day to day. Everything else is a solid, if familiar, list of upgrades.
