Apple Opens Siri AI to Third-Party Developers With Custom Actions and Multi-Step Skills
A new developer preview expands Siri beyond predefined integrations, but broader third-party experiences are still months away.
Technology news
Apple is opening its upgraded Siri AI assistant to a much wider range of third-party applications. Announced November 3 alongside the latest operating system betas, the new developer preview allows app makers to connect custom functions directly to Siri through Apple's App Intents framework. Digital Trends covered the expansion in reporting distributed early November 4 UTC, highlighting a significant change in how outside developers can participate in Apple's assistant ecosystem.
The updated framework allows developers to define actions that users can request through natural language instead of relying exclusively on predefined categories of commands. Apple describes potential uses such as checking deliveries, booking reservations, and placing orders. The assistant can draw on supported personal context and onscreen information to interpret requests and pass them to the relevant app functionality.
Apple is also introducing a capability it calls skills, which lets developers combine several actions into a single Siri experience. Rather than requiring users to issue individual commands for each step of a task, developers can describe workflows that the assistant can execute together. Apple is additionally expanding Siri's ability to retrieve app content through Spotlight's semantic index, including information that does not fit existing predefined schemas.
The company is already demonstrating expanded capabilities across its own applications, including Calendar, Files, Mail, Maps, Messages, Photos, Safari, and Reminders. Examples include retrieving information about previously visited locations and locating files that have not been opened for an extended period. These built-in actions provide a reference for developers exploring the new integration tools.
The expanded third-party capabilities are currently part of a developer preview associated with the iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3, macOS 27.3, and visionOS 27.3 beta releases. Apple says the first customer-facing experiences are expected in a few months, with App Store submissions opening in spring 2027. The company has not presented this preview as a general public launch, and regional availability remains restricted, including limitations affecting Siri AI on iOS and iPadOS in the European Union.