Apple today shared a vague statement announcing that some of its planned Apple Intelligence Siri features will take longer to develop than expected, and it seems that these Siri capabilities won’t be implemented until iOS 19.
Here’s Apple’s statement, for context:
Siri helps our users find what they need and get things done faster, and over the past six months, we’ve made Siri more conversational, introduced new features like typing in Siri and product knowledge, and added integration with ChatGPT. We are also working on a more personalized Siri that can gain more insight into your personal context and be able to take actions for you across your apps and everywhere. Delivering these features will take more time than we originally anticipated, and we expect to begin rolling them out in the coming year.
The term “coming year” is not very specific, and it can be interpreted either as the next 12 months or as 2026. If it’s taken as the next 12 months, it leaves room for a launch that is still part of iOS 18, but 2026 is definitely iOS 19. Apple’s direct acknowledgment of a product delay is unusual, and if Apple was on track to introduce Siri features in iOS 18, would the company really bother announcing a delay? This seems unlikely. For this reason alone, there’s a good chance that Apple has pushed the feature set to iOS 19.
John Gruber from Daring Fireball has reached the same conclusion, suggesting that Apple’s “year” refers to product years starting from WWDC. He believes Apple is subtly hinting at the iOS 19 launch timeline.
Reading between the lines, and based on my PhD-level flow here in Cupertino, what Apple is saying is that these “more personalized Siri” features are being shifted from this year’s OS cycle to next year: iOS 19 and macOS 16. In this context, Apple’s “year” doesn’t refer to calendar years but rather Apple’s OS product years, which effectively start at WWDC.
Additionally, both Reuters and CNBC interpreted Apple’s statement as Siri features being delayed until 2026 and wrote headlines reflecting this. If Apple were only dealing with a few months’ delay, it’s likely the company would have corrected the 2026 assumption, but Apple didn’t provide further clarification nor did it ask those outlets to retract their wording.
We’ll get the first iOS 19 update with new iPhones in September 2025, so if 2026 is accurate, Siri features might not even make it into the iOS 19 release. Instead, they could be scheduled for a future iOS 19 update, maybe iOS 19.2 or iOS 19.3.
Apple’s vague wording has given it some runway to shift the launch timing. After acknowledging the delay, the company now has up to 12 months to deliver the promised Siri functionality, so there’s a good chance that Apple is aiming for the September iOS 19 release, but if it takes longer, expectations could be adjusted accordingly.
Apple announced personal Apple Intelligence Siri features at WWDC 2024 and initially stated that the functionality would come in iOS 18. Rumors suggested Apple was aiming for the iOS 18.4 release, but that timeline wasn’t met. Up until now, it was expected to launch in iOS 18.5 or iOS 18.6, but there are strong indications that the feature set will be bundled with iOS 19 or an iOS 19 update.
The Siri features we’re waiting for include allowing Siri to track emails, messages, files, photos, and much more, with deeper app integration that will enable Siri to do more within apps and between apps.
Apple is also working on an LLM version of Siri, similar to ChatGPT and Google Gemini, and while it was initially planned for the iOS 19 update, it now seems Apple might hold it off until iOS 20.
Update: Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says that Siri features “won’t be released until next year.” Some people in Apple’s AI division believe that the features might need to be “completely reworked from scratch.”
There are concerns that Siri may require more powerful hardware to be fixed, meaning Apple might have to scale down its feature set or make the model run slower on existing devices.
