iPadOS 27 is Coming!

What new features and improvements might we see?

We’re only a few weeks away from WWDC26, the event where Apple will announce the next versions of software for their platforms. So considering we’re getting closer to iPadOS 27’s reveal, I figured I would group together some of the main rumored changes coming, as well as touch on a few wishlist items of my own.

So without further ado, let’s dive in…

Siri 2.0

Earlier this year, Apple partnered with Google to use modified versions of Gemini models to train Apple’s new Apple Intelligence models. And in the announcement for WWDC26, Apple specifically referenced “AI advancements” as a topic of discussion at the event. So chances are extremely high we will see the enhanced Siri revealed.

The new Siri will be able to use what Apple calls “Personal Context” to suggest actions or to take actions for you at your request. It will be able to access data locally on-device, ensuring it stays private and secure. User data won’t be accessible to Apple or Google. It will all stay on your device.

There have also been reports that the new Siri will include a dedicated app, which will allow users to access chat history and to interact with the assistant more naturally and readily. There have been some related rumors that Apple may give Siri an animated Finder-style face to give the assistant more charm and personality. I think this would be a great change, as the Finder icon has never fit as a file manager icon, in my opinion, but definitely does fit the context of a chatbot assistant. Perhaps Finder could get the more intuitive folder icon of the Files app.

The new Siri is also rumored to have “on-screen awareness”, which means it will be able to read/analyze the content open on your display if requested. This could be helpful for coding, allowing a user to have Siri directly analyze the code they’re working on, for example. This could also be helpful for many other workflows, like troubleshooting and walking users through things like settings adjustments, or grabbing content from a project the user has open to be used elsewhere. It’s also rumored Siri may be able to trigger app features based on on-screen analysis of the app’s UI. Apple has publicly tested AI models for this kind of functionality, so this wouldn’t necessarily be far-fetched. On-screen awareness could open a ton of new possibilities for Siri.

Siri Extensions

Back when Apple added the ChatGPT integration with Siri, many noted that the settings to manage the ChatGPT integration were housed in a Settings section under Siri labeled “Extensions”. At the time, I speculated about whether this was evidence Apple was working toward an extensions system for Siri, similar to the way we have browser extensions. Well, it looks very likely that more Siri Extensions will be coming, and Apple is now ready to expand these integrations to other AI assistants.

Of course, we don’t know yet exactly how this will be implemented, but there are growing rumors Apple will announce such a system at WWDC26, which will allow users to add multiple extensions to Siri to expand its utility. Likely such extensions will use Apple’s Private Relay and be subject to Apple’s privacy and security standards.

This could be extremely useful for those who use multiple AI assistants for different things. Siri could act as the bridge that brings them all together under one roof. You want to use Gemini for research? You could access it right there from Siri. You want to work on code? You could access Claude or Copilot from Siri. Siri users basically get the best of all worlds with the ability to use all other common AI assistants as extensions for Siri.

Spotlight Search Enhancements

With macOS 26, Apple introduced a new and enhanced Spotlight Search. In addition to regular search features, Spotlight on the Mac can now execute actions typed into the text field. In addition to this, Spotlight also has several system utilities built-in. For example, Spotlight Search now has a system clipboard feature in macOS 26, which can be useful for those who want to quickly access recently copied or pasted content.

There have been recent rumors that Spotlight Search will become more integrated with Siri, and the new Siri app. This would make a lot of sense, Spotlight Search already looks like a Siri feature on its face, and given the new Siri’s abilities, it would make sense for it to be more tightly integrated. This probably also means that the Spotlight enhancements we saw in macOS 26 will also come to iPadOS and iOS 27.

The only thing that makes me a bit nervous about this would be the “Apps” page included in the new Spotlight on macOS. It completely replaced Launchpad on the Mac, and its new setup isn’t nearly as flexible as Launchpad was. Some have compared it to the App Library on iPadOS and iOS, but it isn’t even close to that. The App Library shows apps inside category folders, allowing you to more readily see which categories your apps are in. On macOS, rather than folders with visible apps, the Apps page gives us an alphabetized list of apps, and at the top is a narrow strip with just category names. Clicking on a category name is kind of like rolling dice; you never know what apps will be in a category and what won’t, especially since it’s at the mercy of whatever an app developer happens to categorize the app as.

If Apple does decide to replace App Library on iOS and iPadOS, I would sincerely hope they’d at least improve the design of the new Apps page to be a better replacement for it. I vastly prefer the App Library layout over the Apps page in Spotlight on the Mac.

More Unified Font Management

While I haven’t seen any rumors about this, I would like to see Apple improve font management in iPadOS 27. The current font management system is okay, and with the help of a third-party app called iFont, I am able to install any font onto my iPad. But this process involves multiple steps that a more robust first-party font management system could hopefully remove. Every time I add fonts from web sources like FontSquirrel, I must add them as configuration profiles to my device. This means I typically wait to load them in batches; that way, I’m not creating a bunch of separate configuration profiles just for single fonts. As I said, this system does work, but it would be awesome if Apple brought Font Book over to the iPad and made it easier to install fonts from sources like the web.

This would also align well with Apple’s new focus on Creator Studio. With the recent arrival of Pixelmator Pro on the iPad, Apple announced the app supports project round-tripping between the iPad and Mac. So if you start a project on the iPad, you can pick it up and finish it on the Mac, and vice versa. And this definitely works quite well. I tested this functionality extensively when I wrote my review of Creator Studio earlier this year. However, testing this round-tripping functionality, I quickly realized that many of the fonts I had installed on my iPad weren’t installed on my Mac. Pixelmator Pro gave me a pop-up when attempting to open files with fonts not installed on the Mac, asking if I wanted to substitute the fonts. The same occurred in the other direction, when I started a project on the Mac with a font not already installed on the iPad.

Font substitutions and having to make sure fonts are in sync across devices isn’t anything new to graphic design workflows, or a unique issue to Apple Creator Studio, but I do think Apple is in a unique position to hopefully fix and streamline it. If Apple brought the Font Book app (or a more unified new font management system) to the iPad, Apple could use iCloud Sync to keep fonts synced across devices. And perhaps, when a user sent an iCloud link to a project to another collaborating Creator Studio user, the font files could also be bundled in, with the option to install them when opening the project. This would make round-tripping and collaborating on projects between Apple devices far simpler and more streamlined.

I’d love to see Apple make some enhancements like these for the font management experience on iPadOS, and Apple’s recent moves with Apple Creator Studio look very promising.

More Unified Platform Features

Last year, Apple brought far greater unification in terms of design and several features and system apps between Apple’s platforms. I think we’ll continue to see further efforts in this direction, even if they’re less dramatic. I think there are currently several aligning factors that will push Apple’s software towards far greater unification in the years to come. One of these is the complete transition to Apple Silicon for the Macs. While Macs have used Apple Silicon chips for several years now, Apple has still had to provide support for older Intel chips as well. That will no longer be the case with macOS 27. Last year, Apple confirmed that macOS 26 was the last major update to support Intel chips, and macOS 27 would drop support for Intel. This will likely make macOS more similar at the system level to iOS and iPadOS. Apple clearly seems to be moving in this direction, so it will be interesting to see how this develops in the next few years.

I think Apple Intelligence and the enhanced Siri 2.0 will also act as major catalysts towards greater unification across the platforms. In order for Siri’s system utility to be consistent across devices, the system utility of the devices would likely need to be more consistent as well. I’m guessing we’ll see a lot more unified core system features with Siri’s new abilities basically requiring more consistency between devices.

Conclusion

I think this will shape up to be a big year for Apple’s software, even though it isn’t coming with a flashy new design like last year. I think we’ll see some major improvements for workflow automation, utility, and greater system unification as Apple ditches Intel support and is allowed to move fully toward a more unified ecosystem of devices. It will be interesting to see what comes, but from the rumors, it sounds like it will bring major improvements to productivity on the iPad.