What to expect from WWDC 2026

## Summary
In comparison to Liquid Glass , the design material Apple introduced last year and now uses across all its operating systems, the new features the company is rumored to announce might not be aesthetic, but they could make just as big of a splash. The design overhaul has been controversial among the company's diehard fans, and Apple has already introduced tweaks in updates that arrived after the release of iOS 26 to make Liquid Glass interfaces more legible. Those features might finally arrive in this year's updates, but Apple is reportedly also changing how users interact with Siri by making the assistant more like a chatbot, according to Bloomberg . Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Users will also be able to interact with Siri inside Apple's other apps via a new feature called "Ask Siri." This may appear as an option in app menus, and allow you to ask the AI assistant questions about content in the app.

## Article Content
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
WWDC 2026
, the latest version of Apple's yearly developer conference, runs from June 8-12, and by all appearances the company has some important updates to outline. In comparison to
Liquid Glass
, the design material Apple introduced last year and now uses across all its operating systems, the new features the company is rumored to announce might not be aesthetic, but they could make just as big of a splash. Namely because Apple might finally be ready to show off its second stab at an overhauled version of Siri.
If you're curious to see the company's new plans for yourself, you can watch Apple's WWDC 2026 keynote
live on its website
,
YouTube channel
or the
Apple Developer Bilibili channel
in China. Apple will also host its Platforms State of the Union stream and individual developer workshops on its developer website if you want to learn even more details about the software updates the company will release later this year. Luckily, we do have some sense of what Apple has in store, and it looks like stability improvements and AI are the company's big focuses for the updates coming to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS and tvOS this fall.
A Snow Leopard-esque approach to stability and performance
Apple released Mac OS X Snow Leopard in 2009, primarily as a way to clean up the performance and refine the new features the company released with Mac OS X Leopard two years prior. The decision to essentially "take a year off" to focus on making everything about the company's desktop operating system feel better was well-received, and Apple is apparently
planning to have iOS 27 serve a similar role
.
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Bloomberg
reports
that Apple's upcoming update will be "focused on improving the software’s quality and underlying performance" and that the company's "engineering teams are now combing through Apple's operating systems, hunting for bloat to cut, bugs to eliminate and any opportunity to meaningfully boost performance and overall quality." Those fixes will presumably extend to the company's other operating systems, too.
Some of this effort may also be focused on cleaning up the visual changes introduced in Apple's big switch to Liquid Glass. The design overhaul has been controversial among the company's diehard fans, and Apple has already introduced tweaks in updates that arrived after the release of iOS 26 to make Liquid Glass interfaces more legible.
Bloomberg
reports
the company could go a step further in its next updates and add a system-wide slider that will allow users to adjust the intensity of Liquid Glass (visual effects like translucency and reflectivity) they want in the interface.
The chatbot-ification of Siri
While stability and performance improvements will be a major focus of this year's updates, Apple is also rumored to be making some major changes to Siri. When the company
first introduced Apple Intelligence
at WWDC 2024, it promised to launch an updated version of the voice assistant that could use your personal context (like the information securely stored on your iPhone) to act across apps. Apple
delayed those features
in March 2025 and then
announced a partnership with Google
in January 2026 to use Gemini models to presumably make them possible.
Those features might finally arrive in this year's updates, but Apple is reportedly also changing how users interact with Siri by making the assistant more like a chatbot,
according to
Bloomberg
. This would make the assistant more interactive and natural to speak to, and could open up other possibilities, like letting users
direct Siri to perform two actions at the same time
. Developers will reportedly also be able to
integrate their own AI assistants with Siri
, much like OpenAI has with ChatGPT.
New places to talk to AI
The chatbot version of Siri will be accessible in the usual ways, but also
reportedly through a standalone Siri app
. The new app will let users prompt the assistant to take care of tasks on their device, search the web and even access news, not unlike current Gemini and ChatGPT apps.
Bloomberg
writes that the app will also be a way to review past conversations with Siri and receive suggestions of prompts to try with the new chatbot version of the assistant.
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Users will also be able to interact with Siri inside Apple's other apps via a new feature called "Ask Siri." This may appear as an option in app menus, and allow you to ask the AI assistant questions about content in the app. It's not clear if this will be as in-depth or capable as Google's
Ask Maps
or
Ask Photos
features, but it at least seems like Apple's thinking along the same lines as its partner.
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## Expert Analysis

### Merits
- Sam Rutherford for Engadget WWDC 2026 , the latest version of Apple's yearly developer conference, runs from June 8-12, and by all appearances the company has some important updates to outline.

### Areas for Consideration
N/A

### Implications
- In comparison to Liquid Glass , the design material Apple introduced last year and now uses across all its operating systems, the new features the company is rumored to announce might not be aesthetic, but they could make just as big of a splash.
- Namely because Apple might finally be ready to show off its second stab at an overhauled version of Siri.
- Apple will also host its Platforms State of the Union stream and individual developer workshops on its developer website if you want to learn even more details about the software updates the company will release later this year.
- Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Bloomberg reports that Apple's upcoming update will be "focused on improving the software’s quality and underlying performance" and that the company's "engineering teams are now combing through Apple's operating systems, hunting for bloat to cut, bugs to eliminate and any opportunity to meaningfully boost performance and overall quality." Those fixes will presumably extend to the company's other operating systems, too.

### Expert Commentary
This article covers apple, company, siri topics. Notable strengths include discussion of apple. Readability: Flesch-Kincaid grade 0.0. Word count: 794.