Apple has opened Siri AI, its rebuilt assistant, to every app developer. The developer preview, an early version for testing, came out on 3rd November with the iOS 27.3 beta. Until now, Siri could only work with app actions that fit categories Apple had set out, such as sending a message or playing an audiobook. Now any app can add its own.
Nothing changes on your iPhone yet, though. Developers can only test this in their own builds and with internal testers, and versions of apps on the App Store don’t get it. So even if you installed the 27.3 beta today, the apps you downloaded from the App Store wouldn’t gain these abilities. Apple says it reaches customers “in a few months”, with App Store submissions opening in the spring.
How apps plug into Siri AI
A developer picks the actions Siri can use, marks each one as a tool and describes in words what it does and what it needs. When you ask for something, Siri reads those descriptions and picks the action that fits. That’s why Siri can only do what an app has made available, and why all of this depends on each developer doing the work.
Take Apple’s own example. You book a ride, then ask Siri to change the pickup address without naming the app, because the ride’s Live Activity, its live status card, is still running. If an app is in the background, you have to name it, so you’d ask whether the sneakers you liked in that app are on sale. Siri can also carry something from one app to another and send those sneakers to your partner in a messaging app.
Longer jobs get what Apple calls skills, plain-language notes telling Siri how the steps fit together. A shopping app’s skill might cover searching, the cart, payment and delivery, then confirming the purchase. Apple says a skill can’t force fixed behaviour, so Siri won’t necessarily run those steps in the order listed.
So once your apps add support, you should be able to say what you want and skip tapping through the screens. Which apps do it, and how much of each app Siri can reach, is up to their developers.
Private data and money
This means letting software act inside apps that hold your money and private details. Apple’s June talk on the risks names two threats. Siri works from the Lock Screen, so someone holding your locked phone could try an action. And instructions hidden in content Siri reads could steer it, a trick called prompt injection. Apple calls solving that “an active research area”.
Apple’s system asks for confirmation on actions it rates as high risk, though the preview documents don’t explain how that applies to the custom actions developers are now adding. The other protection is left to developers. By default, Siri can present an app’s data without authentication, so a developer has to require it. Apple’s own code example is a bank account: the balance needs authentication on the device, and the routing number, which identifies the bank, is hidden from Siri altogether.
That check still has a bug. The iOS 27.3 beta notes list a known issue where Siri AI “might not request an unlock before it displays” data a developer has marked as needing one. App Store apps don’t have this integration yet, so for now the bug only reaches people testing it.
Apple also says more details on terms and usage policies are coming, and it hasn’t published them. So we don’t know what it’ll allow around payments, or what this costs developers, if anything. Siri AI already has daily limits, as we explained last month, and Apple’s post and preview documents don’t say how requests to other apps count. Siri AI also isn’t available on iPhones in the EU or to anyone under 13.
What about Kenya?
Apple’s Siri AI page only singles out the EU and mainland China. Kenya isn’t mentioned, so as Apple writes it, a Kenyan Apple Account on an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, set to English, qualifies. Swahili isn’t one of the six languages available now or the four Apple says are next.
On 5th November, we checked 36 apps on Kenya’s App Store for Apple’s Siri label. Only Uber, WhatsApp, Spotify and Telegram have it. None of the 10 bank apps we checked, including KCB, Equity and NCBA, has it. Neither do My-OneApp, Safaricom’s M-PESA app, Bolt, Jumia or eCitizen. That label is about Siri support in general and tells us nothing about what a developer is testing right now. Still, the four that carry it are all global apps, so they’re probably ahead.
The bigger question for a Kenyan company is how many customers this reaches. iOS was 4.74% of Kenyan mobile web traffic in October, against 94.91% for Android. Web traffic isn’t a count of phones, but it shows the scale, and only newer iPhones run Siri AI. Google’s equivalent, AppFunctions, is still labelled an experimental preview, and Google’s page puts its link to the Gemini assistant at a private preview with trusted testers as of May. So the version most Kenyans could use is further from developers than Apple’s.
If you build iPhone apps here, you can start now with Xcode 27.3, Apple’s developer software, and a supported device. Apple says to check skills on a real device, not in the Simulator.
Apple first promised Siri “hundreds of new actions in and across apps” in June 2024, so this has been a long wait, and now it depends on developers. We expect global apps to get there before Kenyan ones. Before we’d trust any of this with M-PESA or a bank account, we’d want Siri to ask for an unlock before showing a balance and a confirmation before any money moves. Apple’s terms should show how much of that it requires. The App Store opening in the spring will show who’s ready.
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