Unpacking WWDC 2026

The changes seem subtle on the surface but the direction Apple is taking iOS in this year's WWDC is a paradigm shift.

WWDC 2026 TL;DR:

• AppIntents are taking on a new level of importance, no longer just donating into Siri but into a greater AI fabric across iOS
• AppIntents Domains App Schema, AppEntities, AppEnums
• You now annotate your views with AppEntitys and that exposes them to iOS and Siri. This gives Siri the ability to understand what's on screen, giving the user the ability to say "Hey take this thing and something with it"
• Using the Transferrable protocol, Siri can now chain apps together.

With this shift and enough support from the app ecosystem, a user will be able to accomplish most things without ever picking up their phone. I can see that becomming the default for multi app workflows, because the current workflow of tapping into one app, finding where a thing is in its navigation heirarchy, swiping it away, searching for another app, finding another place, pasting the other thing in...yeah we're all going to be using Siri, even if we're just sitting there on the couch.

The GUI isn't going anywhere, though. Which is a common sentiment I'm seeing shared post event. Classes of app will certainly see less use by fingers tapping on images under glass. For those apps, it's going to be a defining moment deciding what that means for their business. But for most apps, even if we have intelligence interacting with the app on our behalf in the background most of the time we're using it, we'll still want to delve down into the GUI. Calm down.