Apple opens Siri AI to all third-party apps in iOS 27.3 developer preview, with skills that chain tasks together
Apple has released a developer preview in the iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3, macOS 27.3 and visionOS 27.3 betas that lets any app plug its own actions and content into Siri AI, a major widening of what the assistant can do outside Apple apps.
Apple has opened its rebuilt Siri assistant to third-party developers, releasing a Siri AI developer preview in the first iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3, macOS 27.3 and visionOS 27.3 betas on November 3 that lets any app bring its own content and actions into Siri AI. The move is the most significant expansion of Siri's reach since the assistant was relaunched with iOS 27 in September, and it changes how iPhone users may soon get things done by voice.
Until now, Siri AI could work with third-party apps only for a limited set of tasks that Apple itself had defined, such as messaging or directions. Under the new preview, developers can use Apple's App Intents framework to tell Siri what their app can do, in their own terms, so that a spoken request can draw on an app's actions and content rather than being confined to a preset menu of commands.
The centrepiece of the preview is a new feature Apple calls skills. These are simple text files, named SKILL.md, in which developers describe how several actions fit together into one task. That allows Siri to chain separate steps into a single conversational request, rather than running one command at a time. Apple gives the example of changing a ride pickup: the assistant orders the ride, follows its progress through a Live Activity and then changes the pickup address, all as one combined action.
The preview also draws on Siri AI's wider capabilities, including onscreen awareness, personal context and natural-language understanding. In practice, that means a request can take into account what is currently on the display and what the person is doing inside an app, and Siri can surface app content through its semantic index beyond a conventional search result. Developers, however, do not hand Siri free access to their data: the assistant can only find content and perform actions that an app explicitly makes available.
Apple is rolling the same capabilities into 15 of its own applications at the same time, including Calendar, Files, Finder, Journal, Mail, Maps, Messages, Music, Notes, Photos, Preview, Reminders, Safari, Shortcuts and Weather. That sets a baseline for how the assistant should behave inside first-party software before third-party integrations arrive on the same surface, and it gives developers a set of working examples to follow.
There are clear limits to what the preview means for ordinary users. This is a developer preview, not a general release: developers can test the integrations on their own devices and with internal testers, but regular users will not see any of it yet, even in apps that already include the code. Apple says the features will reach customers in a few months, and that App Store submissions for apps with these capabilities will open in spring 2027, while reports suggest the iOS 27.3 updates themselves are expected to reach the public later this year.
The preview also arrives with expanded language support. Alongside the developer tooling, the iOS 27.3 beta expands Siri AI to Traditional Chinese, Norwegian, Turkish and Vietnamese, bringing the total number of supported languages to 10, according to reports of the beta. Siri AI requires an Apple Intelligence-enabled device set to a supported language, is not available to users under 13, and remains unavailable in the European Union on iOS, iPadOS and watchOS, where Apple says it is working to find a path forward.
Apple has also set guardrails around how the assistant behaves. Skills can guide Siri, but Apple says plainly that they cannot be used to enforce deterministic behaviour, meaning the AI still decides what to do in each conversation. Siri will only use an app running in the background if the user mentions it by name, unless that app is already open, running a Live Activity or part of an ongoing conversation with Siri, and server-based features, including Siri AI, are subject to daily usage limits.
For developers, the timing matters. Apple is holding Apple Intelligence Group Labs on November 4 and 5 to answer implementation questions, giving app makers a direct route to the engineers behind the system just as they begin building. For users, the practical change will be felt in everyday tasks that currently live inside third-party apps: ordering food, booking tickets, paying bills, checking a delivery or managing a reservation could all become things Siri can handle in one spoken request, rather than tasks that require opening each app in turn.
What happens next will depend on how quickly developers adopt the new tools and how Apple polices them once App Store submissions open. If the integrations work as described, Siri AI could become a genuine front door to the apps people use most, rather than an assistant confined largely to Apple's own software. If developers move slowly, or if the guardrails prove too restrictive, the preview may remain a promising beta for longer than Apple hopes, but the direction of travel is now clear: the assistant is no longer Apple's alone.
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