In the opening keynote of WWDC 2026, Tim Cook welcomed him with a “Good morning!” for the last time before John Ternus took over as CEO in September, and iOS 27 was announced shortly thereafter.
In practice, iOS did not gain as much attention as in other years and only appeared briefly. More than 90% of the presentation focused on the new Siri AI assistant, powered by Apple Intelligence, which has established itself as a fundamental basis for the future of Apple’s operating systems.
Siri AI seems like a promising addition to the system, but as a citizen of the European Union, the author is still unable to test the new version of the assistant, for better or for worse.
Looking beyond artificial intelligence, iOS 27 brings a series of small but relevant additions that arrive on the iPhone in September (or earlier for those who install the beta). The list of new features is quite extensive.
Liquid Glass finally gets fine tuning
The launch of Liquid Glass in iOS 26 was not without problems, with design inconsistencies and accessibility issues. Apple went through several opacity settings, but the result never fully convinced some users.
With iOS 27, the company introduced a new Liquid Glass customization slider that lets you fine-tune the appearance of the interface. You can choose between a completely transparent or fully colored look, with any level in between.
Realistically, this is a feature that most people, including the author, might use once and then forget about. Once you’ve set your preference, there’s no logical reason to touch the control again.
On the other hand, the news clearly shows that Apple listened to user feedback about Liquid Glass, which is positive.
Alarms gain independent volume
Another small but welcome improvement in iOS 27 is the separate control for alarm volume.
Until now, alarm volume was tied to system and ringer volume, which was one of iOS’s oldest flaws.
In iOS 27, there is a dedicated option in the System & Haptics menu that allows you to separate volume levels for system and alarms and timers. By deactivating the corresponding toggle, the user defines a preferred volume just for alarms, independent of the rest.
This is exactly the kind of quality of life improvement that many were hoping to see in the update.
AI comes to the Shortcuts app
One of the native iOS apps that benefits well from AI is Shortcuts.
The automation app is powerful for advanced users, but it has a high learning curve, which makes it complicated for those who don’t know all the available options.
With iOS 27, artificial intelligence kicks in and automatically creates shortcuts from a simple text description. Depending on the complexity of the request, the result may vary depending on the app’s capabilities.
This is a useful feature, and the author has already managed to create complex shortcuts on the Mac that used to be difficult.
Not everything is flowers. Some of the coolest features in iOS 27 are exclusive to the latest iPhone models, even though Apple has sold many previous devices as Apple Intelligence ready. Now there are new features that will not be available on millions of iPhones with still capable hardware.
That said, iOS 27 feels like a breath of fresh air, with several internal improvements and quality of life updates that help fix issues left over from iOS 26.
