Apple faces pressure to deliver on AI promises at WWDC 2026 with major Siri overhaul

Apple WWDC 2026: How to Watch and What to Expect, Including iOS 27, Siri Updates, and More

PCMag is set to be on the ground at WWDC 2026 in early June, Apple's annual developer conference, where the Cupertino-based tech giant is poised to drop a barrage of updates across its major operating systems. We're anticipating a full slate of announcements for iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, and more. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, however, Siri is expected to be the star of the show. Rumors are flying about a massive overhaul that will make the controversial personal assistant competitive in a world where ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other bots are left running the AI playground. If you're curious about what the iPhone maker has in store for all of your Apple devices, here's a breakdown about how to tune in -- and what to expect. How to Watch the WWDC 2026 Keynote Mark your calendars, folks. WWDC takes place from Monday, June 8 to Friday, June 12, with the keynote -- the only segment streamed publicly -- kicking off the four-day conference on day one, June 8, at 10 a.m. Pacific. If you're on Mountain Time, Central Time, or Eastern Time, that works out to 11 a.m., 12 p.m., and 1 p.m., respectively. For our readers in the UK, you'll be tuning in at 6 p.m. The keynote will take place at Apple Park in Cupertino with reserved seats for press, developers, and other VIPs. If you didn't get an invite, you can watch the keynote from the comfort of your own home. It will be livestreamed via Apple's Events website, YouTube channel, and Apple TV app. In my experience, the Apple Events page delivers a faster, higher-fidelity stream, but YouTube is more familiar to use and easier for jumping across devices, such as from your smart TV to your phone. For a closer look at the action, stay tuned for our live blog, as PCMag's mobile expert Florence Ion tracks key announcements straight from Apple Park. What to Expect at WWDC 2026 I've been covering WWDC for six years, and my favorite part of the pre-keynote excitement is analyzing Apple's promotional art ahead of the event. On last year's logo, featuring a translucent "25," Apple teased iOS 26's Liquid Glass aesthetic. This year, the logo's "26" has a glowy effect -- and Gurman suspects it captures the new, luminous animation effects we'll see for the revamped Siri and beyond. A Smarter Siri Powered By Gemini Siri is expected to be the highlight of WWDC. Per Gurman, Apple will announce major updates to the digital assistant, including a standalone app with a chatbot-style interface, the ability to process multiple requests in a single query, and seamless integration with third-party AI agents (e.g., Claude). Further, Siri will reportedly gain the option to access and reference your personal data, as well as your on-screen activity, to improve contextual awareness and deliver more relevant responses. Gurman claims this will be Siri's biggest reboot since its long-ago debut, and that it will be supported by Gemini, thanks to Apple's AI partnership with Google, announced earlier this year. More Intelligent Apple Intelligence Apple is also expanding Apple Intelligence, according to Gurman. We're expecting announcements about AI-generated wallpapers via natural-language prompts, as well as an upgraded Image Playground app with improved image generation and Genmoji creation. Camera ... Widgets? The Camera app is getting a boost, too. Rumor has it that Apple is adding an Add Widgets panel that allows users to swap out the standard top-row shortcuts for pro tools like depth and exposure adjustments. For users who enjoy working with Shortcuts, Gurman claims they will be able to build complex workflows using natural language instead of tedious, step-by-step programming. This could really enhance your results, though Apple hasn't indicated whether it will stamp AI-manipulated photos with an obvious watermark. Expect better Visual Intelligence for image-based searches, too. Upgrades Across Platforms Meanwhile, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27 are expected to inherit many of the same AI-driven enhancements rumored for iOS 27, bringing a more intelligent and context-aware experience to iPad and Mac devices, respectively. In a recent Apple Newsroom post, the company highlighted some accessibility-focused features rolling out to tvOS and visionOS. The former is gaining larger text support, making on-screen text easier to read, while the latter is adding motion sickness reduction for passengers in moving vehicles, face gesture support for performing select actions, and a new eye-selection method. If there's one thing we're clamoring for, it's a less liquid-looking glass user interface. About Face Last year's watchOS 26 upgrade introduced the AI-enabled Workout Buddy alongside improvements to the Smart Stack, new gesture controls, and the Liquid Glass makeover. Watch for Apple's next watchOS, presumably 27, to double down on AI. Both Samsung and Google have AI-based guidance built into their respective wearables for planning workouts and even improving sleep. We expect Apple not to directly follow suit but to find a different way to solve the same problem with its own AI. New health tracking features are possible as well, of course. Apple Watches can already monitor blood pressure to an extent with hypertension notifications, but this process happens entirely in the background. Samsung watches have a blood pressure feature, but it's a pain to use because you have to calibrate readings with a cuff. Apple could get ahead of the crowd here with a feature that takes blood pressure readings without calibration -- though, admittedly, this is a long shot. Finally, as always, watch for the usual upgrades like new watch faces, gesture controls, and more improvements to existing features like the Smart Stack. Fresh Hardware Apple's track record of debuting new hardware at WWDC is somewhat hit-or-miss. Every now and then, it has a fresh round of MacBook updates or a big surprise like the Apple Vision Pro. This year, we're not expecting to see any new phones, tablets, Macs, or other gear from the company. We will, however, be keeping our eyes open for a sneak peek of the rumored folding iPhone. Will it make a (brief) appearance? We hope so! Follow PCMag for the Latest Whether you're looking forward to a smarter Siri or a less nauseating car ride while wearing your Vision Pro, WWDC 2026 is set to tell us all about how the updated ecosystem will reshape how we use our Apple hardware in the near future. PCMag will be reporting live from Cupertino, so be sure to tune in to follow along with us for the latest news as it happens. Andrew Gebhart contributed to this report.

WWDC 2026: The year of the do-over

Apple faces pressure to balance ambitious AI innovation with realistic execution, focusing on practical iPhone user solutions rather than generic demonstrations. Every year at WWDC, Apple kicks off a new cycle of operating system updates that will change the faces of the devices we use every day for the next year. On June 8, we'll get our first glimpse at what the "27" operating systems will bring, which will lead to their arrival in the fall and numerous major updates all the way through next May, when the cycle will begin again. I've been attending Apple's WWDC since sometime in the 1990s, which is... a long time. But this year's event promises to be one of the most interesting ones yet, mostly because in 2024, Apple really stepped in it, promising a bunch of features it didn't deliver. Last year was a bit of an apology tour, but it didn't directly address what had been promised previously. Which means that Apple has really piled two years of promises on the agenda of WWDC 2026. The stakes couldn't be higher. Here's what I'll be watching for at this year's event, especially when it comes to its AI do-over. Time to deliver In 2025, Apple didn't make a single promise at WWDC in June that it failed to deliver by the end of the year. That was by design, as a way to begin to repair the trust that was breached when it got out too far over its skis in 2024. It was a good start, but AI was also largely absent from the promise list last year. This year, Apple needs to deliver on what it failed to deliver in 2024. It needs to deliver the coherent AI strategy it ended up punting two years ago. It's time to renew the vows it made in 2024 and provide a comprehensive approach to AI features on Apple platforms that it can actually begin executing in 2026. The tricky thing is that Apple will need to thread the needle between what's possible and pragmatic and what goes a bit too far. If it gets too conservative with its promises, it risks seeming dowdy and behind the times. But if it goes too wild with promises, it risks a repeat of 2024, where it couldn't execute at the level it had assumed it could. What's the right balance between those two extremes? Apple doesn't want to be seen as being behind, but it also doesn't want to seem desperate in trying to keep up with the cool kids-especially since the power and success of the iPhone means that it doesn't have to. (All the major AI platforms are popular on iOS, which helps a lot.) I think it's more likely that Apple is still overcorrecting from 2024 and will be restrained in what it announces this year, which means I'm bracing for disappointment. What I hope will happen is that Apple will sketch out its broader vision for how AI fits in with its platforms-including some foundational technologies like App Intents and Siri-even if it has to admit that it's going to take longer than six months to get there. Apple hates giving road maps, hates talking about general directions rather than specific features that it can ship, but I think it's required here. It should sell us on its vision for how AI fits in with what it's doing, and then can give some near-term examples of how it's starting to execute on that front. I don't think anyone reasonable feels Apple needs to solve everything about AI in iOS 27.0-but feeling like the company knows where it's going and knows how to get there would sure help. Don't let your standards slip Much has been made of Apple's broken promises in 2024, but there's another sin of the past the company should not repeat: lowering its own standards in order to get features out the door. Forget about the AI features that didn't ship in 2024. The ones that did were not very good! They showed all the signs of being slapped together in a rush in order to get something out the door. Let me give you one example: Writing Tools. AI large-language models excel at writing and rewriting text-it's how they got started. Integrating those text tools into Apple's platforms seemed like basic table stakes. But what Apple shipped wasn't integrated. Its operating systems have been checking your spelling and providing other editing tools for ages. Writing Tools wasn't thoughtfully integrated into the larger text-editing package-it was like a sidecar bolted on to the side, completely separate, with a weird, off-putting interface. What has always set Apple apart from the competition is a thoughtful application of high technology in ways that solve problems for users. Writing Tools does solve some problems, but I wouldn't call its application thoughtful. What I want to see in 2026 is a set of AI features that Apple has really thought through and that fit with the iOS and macOS experience. Features that carry the unmistakable smell of panic and fear are a red flag. Focus on the practical You can't escape the marketing of AI features, but most of that marketing struggles to come up with good, realistic examples of why you'd use those features. (This is a side effect of the features coming first, and the use cases second, which is not how you should ever develop a product.) Apple, to its credit, has proven very good at coming up with examples. All of those Apple Intelligence ads that it got sued over because the features never shipped? At least they were based on useful examples! So during the WWDC keynote, what I want to see are practical demonstrations of Apple's features. I don't need Apple to prove that it's chasing cutting-edge AI features; I want it to solve the problems of iPhone users. I want it to show AI tools fixing things that Apple's customers want to have fixed. And if I see another demo where someone points a camera at a refrigerator and asks for a recipe with the visible ingredients, someone is getting sent to the principal's office. New leaders with a new attitude In the last two years, Apple has gotten rid of the people in charge of its AI strategy. There are new bosses now, and of course, John Ternus is about to become the new CEO. New leadership gives organizations an opportunity to turn the page and do things differently. Even if the new leaders are longtime employees (which is almost always the case at Apple), they're in new roles, and they have the opportunity to put their own stamp on things. I want to see that. I want to get the sense that in the last two years, Apple has really rethought how it approaches AI. What does Siri mean now, compared to what it's meant the last 14 years? Is it the core brand, or is that Apple Intelligence? How do apps function in an increasingly AI-driven world? Sure, new hardware if you have it The top rookie mistake of WWDC anticipation is expecting there to be hardware. This isn't a hardware event; it's an operating-system announcement and developer event. That said, sometimes hardware does appear at WWDC. It doesn't have to, but it could. The Mac Studio and Mac mini both have pretty favorable developer-related narratives, what with the high-end power of the Studio and the fact that the Mac mini has become a darling gadget of AI agent tinkering. Neither product has been updated to M5 yet. This would seem like a decent time, actually, to announce some hardware! But given all the chip shortages out there, I get the feeling that Apple might not really want to create more demand for M5 chips and RAM when it doesn't need to. Still, if you want to hold out hope for a hardware announcement, I'm not going to stomp on your dreams. Want to learn more about Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference? Read the Macworld WWDC superguide and check out the full coverage of WWDC.