- Apple’s highly expected Siri upgrade is jerked to arrive at ‘Spring 2026’
- A new report from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg claims Apple Intelligence-driven Siri is scheduled for an iOS 26.4 release
- A year is a long time in AI’s world. Is it too long to wait?
When WWDC is completed 2025, a new report claims Apple’s big Siri upgrade, powered by Apple Intelligence, is expected to launch in ‘Spring 2026’.
According to Mark Gurman, who wrote for Bloomberg, Apple has “set an internal release target for the spring of 2026 for his delayed upgrade of Siri, which marks an important step in his artificial intelligence rpm.”
Earlier this week, the company showed the future of iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Vision Pro Software that changed the naming scheme that matches the year that we match. The “26” moniker of iOS, iPados, MacOS, Watchos and Visionos includes all AI features, but Apple’s most expected missing is still missing.
Gurman claims that the Siri upgrade, which will allow the voice assistant to pay attention to the screen and personal context, is now intended for iOS 26.4, which based on previous software releases should arrive around March or April next year.
Gurman’s sources told him that an exact date is not set internally, “beyond a spring time frame.” It is also worth noting that this timeframe could change, especially considering AI-run Siri to launch as part of iOS 18 and was originally revealed on WWDC 2024.
Is Siri unrest over?
The past year has been Rocky for Apple to put it mildly. The Cupertino-based company highlighted Apple Intelligence back in June 2024 and highlighted how “AI for the rest of us” would change the way iPhone users interact with their smartphones.
Unfortunately, the Apple Intelligence features launched, such as Genmoji, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence, have all received a somewhat lukewarm response when users are waiting in anticipation of the truly groundbreaking AI Siri promised.
My colleague Lance Ulanoff spoke with Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi and Apple Global VP for Marketing Greg Joswiak after WWDC 2025’s keynote speaker earlier this week.
During the interview (which you can read about and see here), Federighi said, “We sat down for months, making Siri work better and better across multiple app purposes, better and better to search,” Federighi added. “But basically we found that the restrictions in the V1 architecture did not get us to the quality level we knew our customers needed and expected.” This led Apple to expose the release of Siris major upgrade in March this year.
Now we have a clearer idea of when we can expect Siris Apple Intelligence, even though it’s almost another year away, and a year in AI’s world is an incredibly long time.
Of ‘Spring 2026’, will Apple’s competitors like Google and Openai have opened the gap even wider? And if so, Apple will have put all this effort into an AI solution that just becomes bloatware on an iPhone when users choose to use Gemini Live or Chatgpt Advanced Voice Mode instead?
‘Spring 2026’ is just an estimate, but it must be the latest possible arrival in a much needed Siri upgrade; Any additional delays and I think Apple’s loyal user base may become even more frustrated with Tim Cook and co.
