iOS 27 Apple Intelligence Features Explained: What Your iPhone Gets Today, What Waits, and What Has a Daily Limit

iOS 27 is out. Apple says the update started rolling out on Monday, September 14, 2026, free, alongside iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, visionOS 27 and tvOS 27. For an everyday iPhone owner the AI part comes down to three lists: what you get today, what Apple has pushed to later this year, and which features now carry a daily usage limit that Apple says it will eventually charge to lift. This page is those three lists. The rebuilt Siri, the headline feature, has its own page.

Key Takeaways

• iOS 27 shipped September 14, 2026. It is a free update; install it from Settings > General > Software Update.
• The Apple Intelligence features need an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. Apple's launch post lists "iPhone 16 models or later, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max," plus iPhone Air, iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max, and iPhone Duo. An older phone offered iOS 27 gets none of this.
• Shipped, in iOS 27 or one of its updates: Siri AI (beta, waitlisted, six languages), Write with Siri and automatic proofreading, Spatial Reframing and Extend in Photos, a photorealistic Image Playground, Safari tab topics and Notify Me price alerts, Call Context in Phone, plain-English event entry in Calendar, and describe-a-shortcut in Shortcuts.
• iOS 27.2 on October 26, 2026 closed three of the promises on this page: Siri AI in French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, SynthID labels on AI-generated and AI-edited images in Photos and Image Playground, and Suggestions in Messages. It also gave Siri AI memory of past conversations and an Excluded Apps setting.
• Still waiting at the end of October 2026: the redesigned Health app and the Apple Watch Audio Intelligence features (Live Rewind, Siri Recap). Apple also promises Siri AI in Chinese (traditional), Norwegian, Turkish and Vietnamese "by the end of the year".
• Daily limits are now in Apple's own words. The launch-day footnotes say Siri AI, the photo editing tools, Image Playground and the cloud models in Shortcuts "are subject to daily usage limits," and that "expanded access to such features will be available for a fee in the future." No price, no date.
• Two carve-outs by geography: Siri AI is not initially available in the EU on iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch (Mac and Vision Pro are fine), and "Siri AI and the other new Apple Intelligence features will not be available in China."
• Two features need a newer phone than the rest: expressive Siri voices and the more advanced dictation model run only on the iPhone 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air, 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max and iPhone Duo.
• The models were built with Google. Apple says they are "custom-built in collaboration with Google and its Gemini models."

What You Get Today on a Supported iPhone

Everything in this table is in Apple's September 14 press releases as available now, on any iPhone that runs Apple Intelligence, unless the last column says otherwise.

One thing the launch posts leave out, and it decides whether "available today" is true for you: Siri AI does not switch itself on, and there is a queue. Apple's Siri AI requirements page, published September 22, 2026, gives the steps as Settings > Siri > Try Siri AI (Beta), then "pick a voice, complete voice enrollment, and review your privacy settings." After that: "This will add you to a waitlist, and wait times can vary. Siri AI will begin to download automatically when your wait is complete." Apple publishes no typical wait and no way to check your place in the queue. Everything else in the table above arrives with the update itself.

Two features are gated on hardware inside that list. Apple's footnote says "Apple's most powerful on-device model and the features it enables, like expressive voices and more advanced dictation," run only on "iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max," plus iPads with M4 or later and Macs with M3 or later that have at least 12 GB of memory, and Vision Pro (M5). Everything else in the table works on an iPhone 15 Pro. Our compatibility guide has the full device list.

Which Devices Get iOS 27's Apple Intelligence

Apple's launch post gives one list for all five platforms: "iPhone 16 models or later, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPad mini (A17 Pro), iPad models with M1 or later, MacBook Neo (A18 Pro), Mac models with M1 or later, Apple Vision Pro, Apple Watch Series 9 or later, Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, and Apple Watch SE 3 when paired with an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone nearby." The Apple Intelligence page adds iPhone Air, iPhone 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max and iPhone Duo.

Three more gates apply on every device, all from Apple's requirements page, which it rewrote and retitled How to get the next generation of Apple Intelligence on September 14, 2026: free storage for the on-device models, your device language and Siri language set to the same supported language, and no Apple Intelligence at all on a device bought in China mainland.

The storage figure moved in that rewrite, and it is now three numbers rather than one:

The same page carries the sixteen supported languages (English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean) and one line that is easy to miss if you are in Europe: the new Apple Intelligence features across apps -- the photo editing, the reimagined Image Playground, the Safari features -- are available in the EU on iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27 and visionOS 27. It is Siri AI specifically that the EU does not get on iPhone, iPad and Watch, not the rest of the release.

And one number this page has never carried: iOS 27 installs on far more iPhones than Apple Intelligence runs on. Apple's iOS 27 page lists the update as compatible back to the iPhone 11 and the iPhone SE (2nd generation) and later. If you are on an iPhone 12, 13 or 14, the update is yours and nothing on the list above is.

What Waits Until Later This Year

Apple was careful to separate launch day from "later this year" in both posts, and the later list is longer than the marketing suggests.

None of these arrived in iOS 27.1 on October 23, 2026 -- that release is iPhone Duo only and carries no published feature list -- but three of them arrived three days later in iOS 27.2, on October 26, 2026: the five Siri AI languages, SynthID labels and Suggestions in Messages. What is left outstanding is the Health app, Live Rewind, Siri Recap, the four further languages and the third-party Siri AI apps. | Sound Recognition and faster Shazam on the wrist | With the new watches | Apple Watch Series 12 or Ultra 4 only | | SynthID labels on AI-edited images | SHIPPED October 26, 2026. Apple's iOS 27.2 release notes: "Support for SynthID watermarking to help identify whether an image was generated or modified with generative tools in Photos and Image Playground" | All Apple Intelligence devices | | Suggestions in Messages conversations | SHIPPED October 26, 2026, per the same release notes: Suggestions "help you take action based on the context of your conversations, like adding a Calendar invite for a dinner". Apple's Apple Intelligence marketing page still said "coming in a future software update" on that date | All Apple Intelligence devices | | Siri AI in Outlook, Notability, Tripsy | "Soon" | Same devices as Siri AI |

The Apple Watch items are worth reading carefully before buying a watch for them. Apple says Audio Intelligence "requires Apple Watch Series 12 or Apple Watch Ultra 4," which means a Series 11 on watchOS 27 gets none of it, and the two headline features are beta, late 2026, English, and outside the EU to start.

Apple has since published a dedicated Audio Intelligence support page, now stamped September 30, 2026 (it read September 10 when this page first cited it; Apple re-stamped it in place, see Corrections below), and it answers the question most people actually have, which is whether the watch is listening to them. Five things from it are worth knowing before the beta arrives:

• Every one of the four features is opt-in, and Apple names the switch for each: Sound Recognition in Settings > Accessibility > Sound & Name Recognition on the iPhone, Shazam in Settings > Smart Stack > Music Detection on the watch, and Live Rewind and Siri Recap in the Watch app on your iPhone.
• Live Rewind only runs when you double-press the Digital Crown. Apple: it "doesn't continue to transcribe in the background," it shows the last 15 seconds as text, and the snippet "disappears permanently from your Apple Watch approximately 30 seconds after the Apple Watch display dims" unless you save it.
• Siri Recap can be scheduled, and it expires. You can set it by time or location ("only at work," "never at night") and toggle it from Control Center. Summaries "auto-delete after 7 days if you don't save or export them."
• There is an age floor, and a Child Account needs a parent to unlock it. Apple: "Live Rewind and Siri Recap are not available for users under age 13," and for users under 18 on a Child Account "access to Live Rewind and Siri Recap must be turned on by a parent or guardian." Neither restriction is in Apple's launch footnotes, so a family buying a Series 12 for a teenager should read this one first.
• Apple says no audio recording exists. "Audio Intelligence features don't create audio recordings ... There is no recording to share, forward, or produce if requested by any party, because no recording exists." Audio goes into a protected buffer in the S11 chip's Secure Exclave and is deleted after processing; Siri Recap's final summary is written by Apple Foundation Models on Private Cloud Compute, and saved summaries are end-to-end encrypted through iCloud.

Since this page published, Siri AI has also left the iPhone: Apple brought it to Apple TV and HomePod mini on October 13, 2026, including Apple TV 4K boxes people already own. Both need someone in the home to have an Apple Intelligence iPhone or iPad with Siri AI turned on, so the requirements on this page are what gate the living room too.

The Daily Limit, in Apple's Words

The line that changed on launch day is the tense. Apple's usage limits page, published September 9, said Apple "will implement usage limits" on Siri AI, the photo editing tools, Image Playground and the cloud models in Shortcuts. The September 14 press releases say those features "are subject to daily usage limits," that "daily limits may vary by feature, request complexity, system demand, system policies, and other factors," and that "expanded access to such features will be available for a fee in the future."

What that means in practice today: nothing you pay for, and no number Apple has published for how many requests a day is too many. What it means for planning: Apple has now said, twice, that the free version of these features has a ceiling and that going above it will cost money. The support page adds that a feature which hits its limit "will become available again after a time out period." Two further Apple surfaces now carry the limits in the present tense, which matters because a press release is not a document Apple maintains: the requirements page has a Feature Usage Limits section naming "Siri AI, Intelligent Photo Editing Tools, Image Playground, and AFM 3 Cloud models in Shortcuts," and a separate Apple Intelligence Usage Terms page, published September 9, 2026, sets out the limits as terms you accept by using the features. Worth noting what the terms page does not say: it never mentions a fee. The promise that "expanded access to such features will be available for a fee in the future" still appears only in the launch press releases and the requirements page. If you already pay for an AI chatbot, nothing here replaces it yet; if you do not, Siri AI is the first free assistant built into the phone that can do what the free chatbots do, with a cap you cannot see.

The Rest of iOS 27, Briefly

Not every headline in the update is AI. Apple's platforms post lists a slider in Settings that lets you tune Liquid Glass "anywhere from ultraclear to fully tinted," apps that launch "up to 30 percent faster," photos that load "up to 70 percent faster after being taken," AirDrop "up to 80 percent faster," full-resolution iCloud Shared Albums that Android and Windows users can join, perimenopause and menopause support in Cycle Tracking, custom EQ for AirPods, a Flyover in Apple Maps that "combines aerial imagery with AI," and Workout Buddy on Apple Watch that works without your iPhone nearby and now speaks Spanish.

For parents, the child safety post covers the same update: a new child-account setup that starts with only the apps you choose, Ask to Browse (a child needs your approval before a new website opens in Safari), a redesigned Screen Time with daily allowances for entertainment, games and social media, and Communication Safety that now blocks gore or violent content in shared images and videos. Note that Siri AI itself is off-limits to under-13s regardless of those settings.

Should You Install iOS 27 Today

Install it if your iPhone is a 15 Pro or newer, you are outside the EU and China, and you speak one of Siri AI's six languages -- English, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese or Spanish, the last five added on October 26, 2026. You get the whole list above for free, and the beta label on Siri AI is the only stated risk. The rest of iOS 27's Apple Intelligence features, as the table above records, run in the EU; it is Siri AI specifically that does not.

Install it anyway if your iPhone is older and offered the update, or you are in the EU. The performance work, the Liquid Glass slider, Shared Albums and the parental controls arrive with the update regardless; only the Apple Intelligence column stays empty. Do not expect Siri to change.

Wait a week if you rely on your phone for work and would rather let a .0 release settle. Nothing on this page is time-limited except the daily caps, and those apply whenever you start.

Do not buy a phone for any single feature here. The two hardware-gated extras are a Siri voice you can customise and a better dictation model. Everything else, Siri AI included, is identical on a three-year-old iPhone 15 Pro.

Corrections and Updates

October 26, 2026: this page listed three features as still to come and all three shipped today, in iOS 27.2. It said Siri AI's five extra languages were "still not shipped", that SynthID labelling "comes later", and that Suggestions in Messages was "coming in a future software update". Apple's iOS 27.2 release notes, stamped October 26, 2026, and its Siri AI language announcement of the same date deliver all three: Siri AI in French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish; "support for SynthID watermarking to help identify whether an image was generated or modified with generative tools in Photos and Image Playground"; and Suggestions in Messages. The summary, both Key Takeaways, the Siri AI and Image Playground rows, the Smart Reply row and the later-this-year table now say so. One Apple surface contradicts its own release notes: apple.com/apple-intelligence still carried "Suggestions in Messages conversations coming in a future software update" when read live on October 26. The release notes are the newer document and the page says so. Full release: iOS 27.2 explained.

October 23, 2026: the 14 GB storage row named three phones and Apple now names four groups, after a revision on October 22. Apple's requirements page moved its stamp from September 14 to October 22, 2026 and rewrote the row from "iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air" to "iPhone Duo, iPhone 17 Pro models and later, iPhone Air", which puts the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max in the 14 GB tier by name instead of leaving them unlisted. Dated against the Internet Archive capture of October 15, 2026, which still had the September 14 stamp and the three-phone row. The same revision added iPhone Duo to the device-requirements list and inserted a warning that storage use "may temporarily exceed storage requirements during and shortly after a software update, as new models are downloaded and older ones are removed." The storage table and the turn-it-off FAQ now carry the current wording. The sixteen-language list on that page did not change.

October 23, 2026: Siri AI's five extra languages did not ship, and the date is now nine days from running out. Apple's September 14 launch post still reads "with support for French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish coming in October", verbatim and live today. Apple revised How to get Siri AI on October 22, 2026 -- the stamp moved and the device lists gained iPhone Duo -- and left "Siri AI is currently available in English" exactly as it was. So Apple touched the page that carries the claim and did not change its answer. The feature table says so with today's date.

October 18, 2026: the storage table understated what Apple asks of an iPad, a Mac or a Vision Pro. This page listed "up to 14 GB" for the iPhone 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max and iPhone Air only, and put every other supported iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro in the 8 GB row. Apple's requirements page has read, since launch, "Up to 14 GB of storage on device for iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air, iPad models with M4 and later and at least 12GB of unified memory, Mac models with M3 and later and at least 12GB of unified memory, and Apple Vision Pro (M5)" -- verified today on a September 15, 2026 archive capture and on the live page, which are identical. Apple did not change it; this page dropped the qualifier. The iPhone figures were right throughout, and our compatibility guide has carried the full wording all along. Also added, from a page this site had never cited: turning Siri AI on puts you on a waitlist, and Apple's own Siri AI page now states "Siri AI is currently available in English", which is a firmer source for the still-missing five languages than the absence of an announcement. Everything else re-verified live today: the storage tiers, the sixteen languages, the EU and China statements, the Live Rewind and Siri Recap future tense, the under-13 floor and the Child Account gate.

October 17, 2026: no claim on this page was wrong, and this line records the re-verification plus one citation date Apple moved under us. Every load-bearing source was re-read live: the launch platforms post and the Siri AI post still carry "are subject to daily usage limits", "Daily limits may vary by feature, request complexity, system demand, system policies, and other factors" and "Expanded access to such features will be available for a fee in the future" verbatim; the usage limits page is still stamped September 9, 2026 and still carries the older pre-launch tense, "In the future, Apple will implement usage limits", which is exactly the discrepancy this page already describes. The one thing that moved is a date: the Audio Intelligence page read "Published Date: September 10, 2026" on its September 20 archive capture and reads "September 30, 2026" today, so this page's citation date was right when written and is now corrected. Diffing those two captures shows Apple's revision was small and changed nothing here: one grammar fix, three added Siri Recap sentences, and the stamp. Two facts were missing and have been added: Live Rewind and Siri Recap are "not available for users under age 13" and need a parent to enable on an under-18 Child Account. Still outstanding on Apple's side, and the thing to watch: Siri AI's five extra languages were promised "in October" and have not shipped with 14 days left, and Live Rewind and Siri Recap are still written in the future tense on a page Apple revised on September 30.

September 15, 2026: this page said three gates came from Apple's requirements page, "which Apple has not changed since July 7, 2026," and put the storage requirement at "about 7 GB." Apple rewrote that page on September 14, 2026 -- the same day this article published -- retitled it "How to get the next generation of Apple Intelligence," and replaced the single storage figure with up to 8 GB on most supported devices, up to 14 GB on an iPhone 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max or iPhone Air, and 1.5 GB on Apple Watch. The gates section now carries the revised figures, the EU statement and the sixteen-language list from that page. Three things have also been added that this page did not have on publication: the iOS 27 OS compatibility floor (iPhone 11 and iPhone SE 2nd generation and later), Apple's positive statement that the non-Siri Apple Intelligence features are available in the EU, and the contents of Apple's Audio Intelligence support page, dated September 10, 2026, which was cited in Apple's launch footnotes but unread here.