iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27 and tvOS 27

Apple's 2026 releases landed today, September 14, across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27 and tvOS 27. They were announced at the WWDC26 keynote on June 8, with developer betas that day and a public beta in July. Apple's availability post lists all five platforms rolling out together.

This is the complete list of what changed, organized by platform, with the developer consequences separated out. It is a reference piece rather than a review: every claim below traces to Apple's own pages, listed at the end, or to reporting I name where Apple has not published something.

The short version: one feature dominates everything else (the rebuilt Siri), one platform loses an entire processor architecture (the Mac goes Apple silicon only), and the most consequential changes for anyone who ships software are in the SDK and deprecation columns rather than the feature list.

The headline: Siri AI

Apple rebuilt Siri around large models and shipped it as Siri AI, the feature this cycle is built around. Apple's Siri AI announcement describes what it does:

Personal context. Siri can answer questions that require reading across Mail, Messages, Notes, Reminders and Calendar.
Onscreen awareness and app actions. It can act inside apps and on what is currently on screen, not only answer questions.
A dedicated Siri app whose conversation history syncs across devices through iCloud.
Write with Siri for drafting and rewriting, including proofreading "within most third-party apps."
Siri mode in Camera, which turns the viewfinder into a visual search and action surface (splitting a bill with Apple Cash, adding a pass to Wallet are Apple's examples).
Invocation stays where it was: "Hey Siri," the side button, or the Dynamic Island.

Availability is the part to read carefully:

It ships in beta, in English only. French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish arrive in October.
The European Union does not get it on iOS 27 or iPadOS 27. Apple's June 8 post on the DMA delay says there is no timeline, and developers in the EU cannot test Siri AI on iOS, iPadOS or watchOS. Macs and Vision Pro in the EU do get it.
China does not get it either while Apple works through regulatory requirements.
Server-backed features carry daily usage limits, and Apple says expanded access "will be available for a fee in the future." Siri AI is not available to users under 13.

The models behind it were "custom-built in collaboration with Google and its Gemini models," with server-side work running on Private Cloud Compute.

iOS 27

Supported iPhones are iPhone 11 and later, including the SE line from the second generation on. Apple's device list also names iPhone Duo, the 18 and 17 families, iPhone Air and the 16 and 15 families. Apple has not announced dropping any iPhone generation this cycle, and the supported-device strings on its security page match iOS 26.

Beyond Siri AI, Apple lists these changes:

Photos. Spatial Reframing and Extend join an upgraded Clean Up, Image Playground generates photorealistic images, and Apple says support for the SynthID standard is "upcoming" rather than shipped.
Safari. Tabs group themselves automatically by topic, and Notify Me watches a page for changes.
Call Context. Confirmation codes and reservation numbers surface while you are on a call with a business.
Screen Time and child safety. A rebuilt Screen Time, a child-account setup flow, app selection during setup, Ask to Browse in Safari, Communication Safety extended to block gore and violent content, Time Allowances by category, and Schedules.
Design. The Liquid Glass treatment gains a slider between ultraclear and fully tinted, and app icons are sharper.
Performance. Apple's numbers: app launches up to 30% faster, photos loading up to 70% faster, AirDrop up to 80% faster, better cellular to Wi-Fi transitions, and a rebuilt search index feeding Spotlight, Photos and Mail.
Accessibility. Richer VoiceOver image descriptions, VoiceOver integration with the Action button, automatically synced captions for any video with translation, and expanded Magnifier tools.
iCloud Shared Albums. Full-resolution sharing, with easier joining and contributing from Android and Windows.
Health. Cycle Tracking adds perimenopause and menopause notifications.
Home. Apple Intelligence can combine notifications, HomeKit Secure Video gets on-device descriptions and natural-language clip search, and 4K HKSV recording arrives with iCloud+ requirements Apple footnotes.
Maps. Enhanced Flyover built from aerial imagery and Apple's visual models.
Audio and fitness. AirPods gain a custom EQ, GymKit arrives on iPhone, and AirPods Pro 3 heart-rate data syncs with gym equipment.

Two iOS 27 features appear on Apple's own pages with a "coming in a future software update" note rather than a launch date: one-tap suggestions in Messages conversations, and Passwords auto-fix.

iPadOS 27

iPadOS 27 shares the Siri AI, Photos, Safari, child safety, design and performance work above. Apple's supported list is iPad Pro (12.9-inch 4th generation and later, 11-inch 2nd generation and later), iPad Air 4th generation and later, iPad 9th generation and later, and iPad mini 6th generation and later.

The A12-generation iPads fall out of support as a result: iPad 8th generation, iPad mini 5th generation, iPad Air 3rd generation, and the first 11-inch and third 12.9-inch iPad Pro models. That drop list comes from secondary reporting rather than an Apple statement; Apple publishes which devices are supported but not which ones were removed.

iPad-specific work:

Visual Intelligence from screenshots, with a finger tap or an Apple Pencil circle to select what to look up.
Siri actions in Notes, for typed or handwritten text.
PencilKit gains handwriting recognition across more languages and deeper API integration, plus PaperKit for a paper-like writing surface.
Files and external drives move up to 5x faster, and window closing, switching and dragging are reworked.
Photos slideshows can be saved as video, and Calendar can build an event from a description.

macOS 27: Golden Gate

macOS 27 carries the name Golden Gate, and it is the release where the Intel era ends. Apple's developer news is explicit: macOS 26 was the final release supporting Intel Macs, macOS 27 is Apple silicon only, and Rosetta is not restored after the upgrade. Intel-only apps stop running. Apple carved out one exception for legacy Intel games, which the release notes describe as a separate mechanism enabled in beta through a command-line tool.

Supported Macs are MacBook Neo (A18 Pro), MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro, all Apple silicon, from M1 onward.

Feature work:

Design. Liquid Glass gets more uniform refraction and better contrast, toolbars sit uniformly across window tops, sidebars go edge to edge with colored icons, window shapes and menu bar icons are redrawn, and the ultraclear-to-tinted slider arrives here too.
Siri AI and Visual Intelligence. The rebuilt Siri runs on the Mac (including in the EU, unlike iOS), with a Command-Shift-Space shortcut for Visual Intelligence on screenshots and selected content.
Apps and system. Safari topic grouping, Notify Me and "Describe an Extension"; Photos Spatial Reframing, Extend and improved Clean Up; "Describe a shortcut"; Mail ranking; Live Activities mirrored from iPhone into the menu bar; iPhone widgets on the Mac.
Performance. Faster AirDrop, network browsing, Spotlight indexing, Spaces and Mission Control swiping, and quicker iCloud Photos upload starts.
Security. The Gatekeeper CLI gains spctl --purge for stale database entries; SIP denies cross-developer-team app container and app group access by default; XProtect may restrict access to commonly targeted app data; direct local TCC database access is removed; and MDM, declarative device management, ADE, configuration profile, app install and software update processes now require TLS 1.2 with App Transport Security.
Rosetta and Intel. Covered above: no restore path, and Intel-only binaries are done.
Deprecations. Encrypted HFS+ via CoreStorage, the DVDPlayback framework and the classic ld64 linker are gone, PreviewProvider is deprecated in Xcode 27, and On Demand Resources gives way to Background Assets.

watchOS 27

watchOS 27 runs on Apple Watch SE 3, Series 9 through 12, and Ultra 2 through 4, paired with an iPhone 11 or later. The reported drops are the original Apple Watch Ultra, Series 6 through 8, and the SE 2.

Siri AI on Watch keeps the personal context, world knowledge and app actions from the phone, requires an Apple Intelligence-capable paired iPhone, and is not available in the EU at launch.
Interface. The app grid highlights suggested, popular and recently used apps, an index-finger and thumb tap selects a Smart Stack widget, and Liquid Glass gets the same readability pass as the other platforms.
Workouts. Workout Buddy adds pace, distance and duration insights, works without the phone over Wi-Fi or cellular, and now speaks Spanish. Treadmill walk and run distance improves through new motion algorithms.
Health. Cycle Tracking adds perimenopause notifications for users 40 and over, with symptom tracking and education.
Other. A unified map-centric Find My for devices, items and people; Smart Stack suggestions for parked cars, birthdays, transit cards and noise alerts; Call Context; Wallet passes synced from iOS 27; offline Shazam; and child safety features.
Audio Intelligence (Sound Recognition, Live Rewind, Siri Recap, faster Shazam) needs an Apple Watch Series 12 or Ultra 4, with Live Rewind and Siri Recap in beta in late 2026 on an iPhone 16 or later, excluding the 16e.

tvOS 27

tvOS 27 supports Apple TV 4K from the second generation (2021) onward. Reported drops are the Apple TV HD (2015) and the first-generation Apple TV 4K. Apple publishes no tvOS 27 compatibility page, and there is no tvOS page in its OS index at all.

This is the lightest release of the five:

Apple Music gains Hi-Res Lossless on Apple TV, and AutoMix arrives on tvOS and HomePod.
Apple Podcasts is redesigned around video playback, with sidebar navigation and creator artwork.
Accessibility and interface. Broader text-size options, customizable subtitles, and a more responsive Control Center.
Smart home. With Apple Intelligence in the Home app, HomeKit Secure Video recordings get descriptions and natural-language search, processed on device or in Private Cloud Compute, and requiring an iCloud+ plan starting at 2TB.
Performance. Faster AirPlay from other Apple devices, quicker app launches and smoother animations.

There is no Siri AI announcement for tvOS, and no tvOS-specific gaming feature in Apple's material.

What developers have to do

The SDK side of this cycle has more teeth than usual.

Xcode 27 ships the SDKs and Swift 6.4. It requires macOS Tahoe 26.6 or later and runs on Apple silicon only. It is also smaller (Apple says 30% smaller), adds agentic coding with models from Anthropic, Google and OpenAI, a Device Hub, and plug-ins over MCP and the Agent Client Protocol.
Foundation Models gets a native Swift API, a Language Model protocol that third-party providers can conform to, multimodal image prompts, Vision tools, Dynamic Profiles, and a new Evaluations framework, plus an fm CLI and Python SDK. Apple is offering Private Cloud Compute access free to App Store Small Business Program members under two million first-time downloads.
Core AI is new: an operating-system-level framework for running custom on-device models with ahead-of-time compilation and zero-copy paths on Apple silicon. Background Neural Engine access is now restricted the way GPU access is, behind a com.apple.developer.background-tasks.continued-processing.inference entitlement.
App Intents adds entity and intent schemas, a View Annotations API, and an App Intents Testing framework, with Core Spotlight indexing into LLM search.
Deprecations and breakage to plan for. Apps built with the latest SDK must adopt the scene-based life cycle or fail to launch. canOpenURL: is deprecated. SwiftUI's FileDocument is replaced by ReadableDocument/Document. On Demand Resources and NSBundleResourceRequest are deprecated in favour of Background Assets. On watchOS, WKExtension and WKExtensionDelegate are deprecated. tvOS loses PHAssetResource.originalFilename in favour of a nullable filename.
The deadline. Submissions built with the 27 SDKs opened on September 9, 2026, and from April 2027 apps for iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, visionOS and watchOS must be built with their 27 SDK or later. macOS is not on that list.
StoreKit and the App Store. Subscription Bundles and Suites get product APIs, volume purchasing adds OwnershipType.assigned and assignment revocation, and offer codes now return a VerificationResult. On the App Store side, Apple added Creative Assets and an Asset Library, Personalized Collections and App Notes (US English first), Featuring Nominations, Retention Messaging, and group purchases later in the cycle.

What did not ship, or is gated

Rosetta and Intel support end without a restore path, and Intel-only games need a separate legacy mechanism.
Siri AI is not in the EU on iPhone, iPad or Watch, and not in China anywhere. It ships in beta with daily limits and a future paid tier.
Messages suggestions and Passwords auto-fix are marked as coming in a future update.
SynthID support in Photos is described as upcoming.
The Health app redesign (Insights and Longevity tabs, Health Age) arrives later this year.
RealityKit's Gaussian Splat Component is "available in an upcoming release" per the macOS 27 notes.
Home AI features on any platform need an iCloud+ plan starting at 2TB.

How to read this list

Everything about features, dates, device support and APIs above comes from Apple's own documentation, which is worth reading directly if any of it affects your roadmap:

iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 release notes and what's new in iOS
macOS 27 Golden Gate release notes and what's new in macOS
watchOS 27 release notes and what's new in watchOS
tvOS 27 release notes
Xcode 27 release notes
Apple's SDK deadline announcement and the support article for macOS 27
The platform pages: iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS
Apple's WWDC26 keynote announcement and the developer-tools post covering Xcode 27, Foundation Models and Core AI

Where I say "reported," the claim comes from the press rather than Apple: the iPad, watch and TV device drop lists, the exact public beta date, and the build numbers. Apple publishes what runs the new software, not what stopped running it.

Apple's own pages also leave gaps worth knowing about. There is no published minimum deployment target change for the 27 SDKs. The advanced Siri footnote on Apple's iOS page lists hardware (iPhone 17 Pro and later, iPads with M4 and 12GB of memory, Macs with M3 and later) without saying which feature it binds to. And no CVE list for macOS 27 was available when it shipped.

The pattern across all five platforms is consistent: the conversational assistant is the product story, and the operational story is that Apple is finishing its own transition. Apple silicon is now the floor for Macs, the scene-based life cycle is required, the old resource APIs are deprecated, and there is an April 2027 deadline to rebuild against the new SDKs. If you maintain an Apple-platform app, that deadline is the item on this list with a date attached.