Special Edition: Upgrade to iOS 27. Then do these things.

Thanks for being a free subscriber to the New Things newsletter! Special Editions like this one are available in full to paid subscribers.

Upgrade to an annual subscription now!

iOS 27 is here, and the biggest headline is one I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to write in my lifetime:

Siri no longer sucks.

Apple’s assistant finally has a real AI brain. It can understand what’s on your screen, search through information on your phone and use the camera to understand what you’re looking at. 

But the real reason to upgrade is actually much simpler: iOS 27 is faster, more stable and less buggy than iOS 26.

I’ve been using it for the last few months, and these are my five biggest takeaways.

And yes, I am back with my annual video where I attempt as many tips as the iOS version number. 27 tips for iOS 27 is live now on YouTube. Go download iOS, then go watch. 

Usually when a big iOS release lands, I advise a little caution. Wait a few days and let everyone else discover the battery-draining bug that turns the phone into a hand warmer.

Not this year. iOS 27 is mostly a housekeeping update, and that’s a good thing. No need to buy a new phone to get faster performance and more stability. Even things like AirDrop are faster, and I’ve even seen some battery life gains on my iPhone 17 Pro.  

So yes, don’t hesitate. Upgrade.

A big selling point of iOS 26 was Liquid Glass—Apple’s big transparent redesign that sometimes made your iPhone look like it had been dunked in a vat of oil. 

Apple realized it wasn’t for everyone. Go to Settings > Appearance > Liquid Glass and there’s now a slider that lets you turn down the glassiness. This is one of the first things I changed. 

There are a few other little visual tweaks, too. You can now supersize widgets: long-press one, then tap the option all the way on the right for the biggest version.  

This is the big one. The new Siri AI can understand what Apple calls your Personal Context—information inside Messages, Mail, Safari, Photos and more. So I can ask, “What was the restaurant David texted me about last week?” and Siri can search my messages, find it and understand what I mean.

I’ve been using Siri this way for months—for all those tiny details I know are buried somewhere in a text thread—and I’ve come to rely on it.

Is it a glorified iMessage search? Maybe. But that’s not all. Siri can also understand what’s on your screen. I often ask it to take information I am looking at and add it to Notes. It can even put it into a chart. 

There’s a catch: You need an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, and at launch Siri AI has a waitlist. Go to Settings > Siri, turn on Siri AI and sign up.

I imagine plenty of people will have a bad reaction to Siri having access to all of this information. Apple says it designed the system with privacy in mind, including processing some requests on-device and using its Private Cloud Compute system for more complex ones. If you want the full explanation, watch my Siri review video from this summer.

And if you don’t want Siri pulling information from certain apps, you can limit that. Go to Settings > Search, select the app—say, Messages—and turn off Show Content in Search.

A few other good Siri tricks: Open the Camera, swipe over to the Siri tab and point it at something to ask what it is. You can also scan contact information straight into Contacts, look up nutrition by pointing the camera at your food and even have Siri help split a restaurant bill.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Sometimes Siri  just appears to be thinking and doesn’t return responses. And sometimes I say “Hey Siri” and every Apple device in the room responds except the one in my hand.

Apple’s AI is now sprinkled all over the operating system. In Photos, it can extend the edges of an image and even reframe the shot. In my testing, it was much better at inventing extra sky and sand on the beach than extra human limbs, which is probably for the best.

The Shortcuts app also finally makes sense.  Instead of building some elaborate automation like you’re programming a nuclear reactor, you can just describe what you want and Apple Intelligence builds the shortcut.  

And you can describe a Safari extension and have AI build it. I made one that lets you smash the New Things website with a hammer. A crucial productivity tool. Directions for all of this in the video.

This is actually my favorite category. You can finally save a single frame from a video as a photo. Go to the Camera app > tap the three dots on top right > select “Save Video Frame as Photo.” Android phones have had this, so welcome to the future, iPhone owners.

On the iPhone 17 and newer, you can record the front and rear cameras at the same time.  

Then there’s all the glorious Settings-nerd stuff: separate alarm volume, better Wi-Fi-to-cellular handoff, an AirPods equalizer and scrubbing through songs and podcasts in CarPlay.

Have I mentioned you can watch it all in our latest video? Go watch! Happy upgrading.

This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz.