Today Apple announced its lineup of new accessibility features coming in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, and more, with an upgrade to Voice Control offering an exciting preview of agentic capabilities the new Siri will reportedly gain.

iOS 27 upgrades Voice Control with AI, offering preview of Siri’s rumored agentic features

Every year Apple previews new accessibility features ahead of WWDC, offering the first official reveal of improvements in forthcoming versions of iOS, macOS, and more.

One standout in this year’s batch of features is that Voice Control in iOS 27 will support natural language thanks to Apple Intelligence.

From Apple’s press release:

With Apple Intelligence, Voice Control becomes more intuitive than ever, using natural language to help users with a range of physical disabilities navigate iPhone and iPad entirely by voice. With a new flexible input, users can describe onscreen buttons and controls with natural language instead of memorizing exact labels or numbers. The option to “say what you see” is great for navigating any app, including those with visual layouts such as Apple Maps or Files, using intuitive language like “tap the guide about best restaurants” or “tap the purple folder.” This can also help users overcome barriers when elements aren’t properly labeled for accessibility.

Clearly the feature has tremendous benefits for accessibility purposes. But as confirmed by Mark Gurman, the underlying agentic capabilities are also baked into iOS 27’s new Siri.

Back in 2024, Apple announced that Siri would be able to:

1. Perform hundreds of new actions in and across apps
2. Gain awareness of everything on your screen

Those features ultimately got delayed. But now, Apple has effectively previewed a version of them via this Voice Control upgrade.

This connection was spotted by Dylan McDonald, who shared Apple’s demo video:

As the video shows, Siri gaining agentic capabilities could prove an extremely powerful tool across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro.

There’s something magical about being able to just speak to your device about anything you’re seeing and have it understand and take action.

And based on Apple’s own 2024 announcements, and reporting from Mark Gurman and others, that’s exactly what’s coming in just a few weeks.

For more on what’s rumored for iOS 27’s new Siri, see our coverage here.

Source: 9to5mac