Apple will allow Siri AI to carry out tasks across third-party apps, the company announced as part of the iOS 27.3 update rolling out on Tuesday. Under the change, developers can integrate Siri AI's new features in all apps, giving the voice assistant the ability to draw on a user's personal context, handle natural language prompts, and use on-screen awareness to complete requests. The capabilities arrive in a Developer Preview, meaning third-party developers can begin building against them before they reach users more broadly.
The update also introduces an "app skills" feature that third-party developers can create to bundle several tasks into a single action. According to Apple's developer documentation, users will not have to name an app in their request when it is in the foreground, when it appears in a Live Activity, or when they are discussing the app with Siri AI. Apple's own example describes a person requesting a ride through a ride share app, following updates in the app's Live Activity while waiting, and then asking Siri to change the pickup location to a different address without naming the app.
Apple previously offered third-party developers a smaller set of features, 9to5Mac noted. The iOS 27.3 Developer Preview expands that access to all apps and adds the skills capability on top of it. The change affects developers building for Apple's platforms as well as users of those apps, though the features remain in preview for now.
Apple is extending Siri AI's expanded capabilities to its own apps as well, including Calendar, Files, Finder, Journal, Mail, Maps, Messages, Music, Notes, Photos, Preview, Reminders, Safari, Shortcuts, and Weather. According to Apple, users can do things like find a coffee shop they visited last week or archive files that have not been opened in over a year. The company also said users can ask Siri AI what it can do within each app.
The iOS 27.3 release is the second part of a two-part rollout: the developer preview of the integration and skills tools, and the update itself, which is going out on Tuesday. For US users and developers, the announcement sets the terms under which third-party apps can hand tasks to Siri AI and under which Apple's own apps will expose their functions to the assistant.
Apple's documentation frames the app-name omission as central to the experience, since it lets requests flow from an app's foreground state or its Live Activity without the user restating which service is involved. The company has not said when the developer preview features will become available to all users.
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