Today is the day Apple starts rolling out iOS 27 to millions of iPhones around the world — and as I’ve been using the developer version of the software since it was first pushed out in June, I can tell you about the best features coming your way.
The good news is that any iPhone running iOS 26 can also run iOS 27, although some of the more advanced Siri AI features (such as the ability to change its pace and ‘expressiveness’) are only available on newer models with more powerful chipsets.
You will get a notification on your phone when iOS 27 is ready for you, but if you are not patient enough for that, you can open Settings on iOS and tap General > Software Update to see if there is an update waiting.
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1. Reframe your photos
iOS 27 comes with some clever AI-powered photo editing tricks, including one called Reframe. It lets you easily change the angle of a photo you’ve taken, with AI adjusting the background.
In Photos, tap a picture to open it, then tap the icon that shows three sliders at the bottom. If you then type Tools in the ReframeYou can touch and drag on the screen to change the perspective (use two fingers to pan and zoom). Tap Reframe to confirm.
The other options on the Tools Menu can also be useful: Extend will use AI to present a wider background canvas for you, while Clean up lets you remove specific objects or people from your pictures.
2. Create shortcuts using natural language
The Shortcuts app is one of the most powerful tools available in iOS, but as we wrote before, it’s not that easy to use. With the new software update, abbreviations become much easier: you can just describe the combinations you want using natural language, which significantly simplifies the process.
Shortcuts allow you to set up a multitude of automations and routines on your iPhone: convert text to audio, play a podcast after your morning alarm, mark notes in batches, let people know you’re late, create GIFs from videos, and much more. Open the Gallery Tab in the shortcut app for some inspiration.
With iOS 27 installed, if you go to the + (plus) button on the main menu All abbreviations screen, you can easily describe what you want your shortcut to do – whether it’s attaching screenshots to emails or summarizing your to-do list for the day.
3. Choose a separate alarm volume
Not a feature that will necessarily grab the headlines, but definitely one of the most useful I’ve come across since I first installed iOS 27: you can now set alert volume separately from the main ringtone and system volume.
Head in Sounds & Haptics from settings on iOS, disable the Match ringtone volume toggle switch under Alarm and timerand set your desired alarm volume – a customization that is long overdue.
4. Adjust the Liquid Glass effect
People asked, and Apple listened: you can now take the edge off the Liquid Glass effect if you find it a bit overwhelming in its default state. The available adjustments are not huge, but you can turn it down (or up) a bit.
From Settings in iOS, tap Appearance > Liquid Glass. You get a slider that lets you go from quite a bit of transparency (left) to barely any transparency (right), with the changes previewed for you in the image above.
Apple has also done some cleaning of Liquid Glass in iOS 27, so you should notice some refinements when you start using the new operating system: as per Apple, Liquid Glass now offers “more uniform refraction and improved contrast”, while individual app icons have been made “sharper and more detailed”.
5. Siri AI
The biggest new feature in iOS 27 is the comprehensive upgrade Siri is getting. It has a new name (same as the old name, with “AI” at the end), plus much better base models (courtesy of Google) which means it’s now on a par with the likes of ChatGPT when it comes to the quality and breadth of responses you get.
So what is actually new? When it first lands, Siri AI will spend some time indexing everything on your phone, giving you more context about what’s in your texts, calendars and emails (none of this data is sent back to Apple) – and it can also take more actions in apps, including creating notes, rotating photos, replaying podcasts, and much more.
You can now give commands like “show me photos of when I went to Spain” with this personal context, and questions like “Why do the stars twinkle in the sky?” without submitting the assistant to ChatGPT. There’s also a standalone Siri app for the first time, meaning you can save your chats and sync them across devices.
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