Apple formally deprecated SiriKit at WWDC 2026, giving developers a two to three year window to migrate. The mandated replacement, App Intents, is an intent-driven architecture where you define arbitrary actions with typed parameters and privacy declarations, rather than mapping into Apple’s fixed domain vocabulary. From iOS 27’s public release in September 2026, SiriKit-based apps become invisible to the new Gemini-powered Siri AI — the centrepiece of Apple’s WWDC 2026 platform bet. They compile, but they receive no voice traffic, no Spotlight indexing, and no Apple Intelligence personalisation. Early launch partners like Uber, Amazon, YouTube, WhatsApp, and AllTrails already demonstrate the target state, but for most developers the migration sits ahead of them, and the practical App Store review deadline lands around mid-August 2026.
What is App Intents and why is Apple replacing SiriKit with it?
SiriKit launched in 2016 with a narrow set of fixed domains: messaging, ride booking, payments, VoIP calling, workouts, and media playback. It never expanded beyond that vocabulary. Meanwhile, the app ecosystem grew into thousands of categories Apple’s 2016 imagination could not accommodate.
App Intents, first introduced in iOS 16 and expanded to version 2.0 at WWDC 2026, inverts the model. It is a Swift-native, declarative framework where you define discrete actions using @Parameter property wrappers and async/await perform() methods. The type system is the schema. Siri AI discovers intents dynamically, and the compiler generates metadata stored in the app bundle so the OS understands what your app can do without launching it. Those launch partners are not running demos: they are production-scale implementations showing the framework is ready for real workloads.
App Intents 2.0 adds streaming responses, multi-turn conversational follow-ups, View Annotations for referencing on-screen UI elements, and App Schemas for semantic understanding without training phrases. Apple’s official migration guide lives at developer.apple.com/documentation/widgetkit/migrating-from-sirikit-intents-to-app-intents, and the WWDC sessions to watch are 295 (“Meet AppIntentsTesting”) and 240 (“Build intelligent Siri experiences with App Schemas”).
What exactly happens to SiriKit-based apps when iOS 27 ships?
The two to three year deprecation window refers to when SiriKit is removed from the SDK entirely, projected for 2028 or 2029. The user-facing functionality loss begins much sooner: September 2026, when iOS 27 ships to the public.
On iOS 27, your INIntent and INExtension code still compiles. Xcode 27 surfaces deprecation warnings, but nothing breaks. The problem is that Siri AI routes exclusively through App Intents. Your app receives no voice traffic. As one analysis put it, “SiriKit apps on iOS 27 are not broken. They are invisible. There is no crash log. The user just assumes your app does not support voice.”
Spotlight indexing and Apple Intelligence personalisation also depend on App Intents and App Entities, so the loss extends beyond voice to system-wide search visibility and contextual recommendations — all part of Apple’s broader Siri AI platform strategy. The developer beta to public beta to general release cycle compresses the practical window: stable Xcode 27 tooling may not arrive until well into the beta period, and App Store review for iOS 27 GM realistically requires submission by mid-August.
App Intents vs SiriKit: what is the architectural difference and why does it matter?
This is the “why” behind the urgency. SiriKit was domain-constrained and vocabulary-limited. Apps declared support for one of roughly ten predefined domains, each with a fixed schema of INIntent types and INExtension handlers using Objective-C-compatible completion-handler patterns. Siri invoked that extension, the extension executed the action, and results travelled back through an inter-process communication layer developers did not control.
App Intents inverts this entirely. You define arbitrary intents as Swift structs, any typed parameters you need, and an async perform() method returning structured results. ProvidesDialog handles spoken responses, ProvidesView handles UI. There is no domain whitelist and no fixed vocabulary. Siri AI uses natural language understanding to map user requests to declared intents at runtime. The AppShortcutsProvider registration mechanism makes intents discoverable without user configuration. Skip it and your migrated intent stays invisible.
Apple also adopted MCP system-wide in iOS 27, making registered MCP servers callable by Siri AI alongside App Intents. You now have two supported paths: App Intents for Apple’s ecosystem surfaces (Siri, Spotlight, Shortcuts, Widgets), and MCP for structured tool-use patterns across AI model providers.
For enterprise and healthcare developers, the Privacy Manifest declaration per intent provides a structured way to document data flows for GDPR and HIPAA audits, but compliance responsibility remains with you, and the regulatory landscape is unsettled, particularly in the EU where Siri AI is delayed under the Digital Markets Act.
How do App Entities and App Schemas extend what App Intents can do?
An App Intent defines what your app can do. An App Entity defines the data your app knows about. Without both, even correctly declared intents stay invisible to conversational AI. As one developer who shipped App Intents in production put it, “App Entities matter more than I thought.”
The practical difference: an App Entity tells Siri AI what a “water entry” looks like and how to query for it. An App Schema tells it how that entry relates to health goals or daily summaries. One defines the data shape; the other defines what that data means in context.
Entities conforming to IndexedEntity surface in Spotlight’s semantic index, making app content searchable without the app being opened. EntityStringQuery enables Siri, Shortcuts, and Spotlight to find entities by string matching. Without App Entities, Siri AI can trigger “log water” but cannot answer “how much water did I drink today?” because the data is invisible to the system.
App Schemas, new in iOS 27, let you describe your app’s data and actions using semantic schemas Siri AI understands natively. Entity schemas contribute content to Spotlight, intent schemas enable action on indexed content, and neither requires training-phrase dictionaries. The AppIntentsTesting framework validates the whole stack through the actual Siri, Shortcuts, and Spotlight infrastructure with no mocks.
Now that the full stack is clear, the next question is: where does all this processing actually happen, and who controls it?
How does Apple’s privacy architecture handle App Intents?
Apple’s three-tier processing architecture routes requests through on-device Apple Foundation Models for most tasks, Private Cloud Compute for heavier workloads where data is not stored or accessible to Apple, and Google Cloud as a stateless fallback for queries exceeding on-device and PCC capacity. Core AI dynamically routes between tiers.
The Privacy Manifest declaration, introduced at WWDC 2026, makes you declare what data each intent accesses, for what purpose, and whether the interaction may route to cloud processing. This replaces SiriKit’s implicit domain-based permission model with explicit, auditable per-intent declarations. For healthcare, legal, and financial applications with regulatory restrictions on data processing location, the per-intent declaration is a compliance question, not a user experience preference.
These routing controls extend into managed environments. Xcode 27 surfaces routing configuration: personal health data and financial information should stay on-device, while complex multi-intent reasoning may route to PCC or Google Cloud. Enterprise MDM controls let IT administrators enforce on-device-only processing and restrict third-party AI service access on supervised devices. The EU and China add another layer: Siri AI is delayed in the EU under the Digital Markets Act, and China has no timeline for availability. Regulatory fragmentation like this is one of several factors shaping the migration-timing decision.
What should developers evaluate when deciding whether to migrate now versus waiting?
Three factors shape the decision. First, integration depth. Apps using one or two SiriKit domains face a manageable migration measured in days to a week. Deep integrations across multiple domains require a substantial rewrite, and Apple has not announced financial support or extended deadlines for complex cases.
Second, launch partner candidacy. Early migration gains visibility, early tooling access, and first-mover advantage. Apps that are not launch partner candidates may reasonably wait for tooling stability, though the trade-off is less testing runway before the September deadline.
Third, testing runway. The AppIntentsTesting framework enables CI-pipeline validation, but integration testing against the actual Siri, Shortcuts, and Spotlight stack requires time. Developers who wait until the general release may not have enough runway. Backward-compatibility strategies using #available(iOS 27, *) checks remain underexplored, with no published Apple guidance on coexistence. The iOS 16 minimum deployment target for App Intents also means apps supporting older OS versions need a phased rollout.
What does the migration process involve and how much effort does it require?
The migration follows a four-step workflow. First, audit your codebase for INIntent, INExtension, and .intentdefinition files. Second, use Xcode 27’s built-in “Convert to App Intent” tool for Widget configuration intents. Third, manually rewrite custom INIntent handlers as AppIntent structs with @Parameter property wrappers and async/await perform() methods. Fourth, register migrated intents with AppShortcutsProvider and declare Privacy Manifests per intent.
For most apps using one or two SiriKit domains, the migration is roughly a week of focused work. The Water app by 941 Apps shipped with an 80-line LogWaterIntent and became callable by Siri from Apple Watch without touching the screen. Complex migrations scale non-linearly because each SiriKit domain had unique handler patterns and completion-handler chains that must be redesigned for the async/await paradigm. Apple has not published domain-specific migration guides mapping SiriKit’s fixed domains to their App Intents equivalents, which is the biggest practical gap for deeply integrated apps.
For testing, the AppIntentsTesting framework validates intents through the same code paths Siri and Shortcuts use, so passing tests mean your intent is actually reachable. Test-only intents that are not user-discoverable and wrapped in debug-only compilation provide a pattern for seeding test data. Budgeting testing time proportional to your number of migrated intents is a reasonable starting point.
The migration is worth doing for its own sake, independent of the deprecation. The deadline just forces the prioritisation.
The SiriKit deprecation is not a routine API swap. It is the developer-facing execution of Apple’s Siri AI platform bet — a three-layer adoption spanning App Intents (actions), App Entities (data), and App Schemas (semantic understanding), with per-intent privacy compliance obligations and a September 2026 real deadline. For deeply integrated apps, the effort scales and Apple has offered no financial support. The “now versus wait” calculus turns on your integration depth, launch partner status, and testing runway, but every developer needs a plan, because the alternative is invisibility to the platform’s primary AI interface when iOS 27 ships.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do App Intents require an internet connection to work?
Not necessarily. Apple’s Core AI routes most App Intent requests through on-device Apple Foundation Models, meaning common actions work offline. You configure per-intent routing in Xcode 27: latency-tolerant requests with sensitive data can be locked to on-device only, while complex multi-intent reasoning may require Private Cloud Compute. The Privacy Manifest declaration for each intent explicitly states whether cloud routing is possible.
Will my existing Shortcuts integrations break when I migrate?
No. Shortcuts integrations built with App Intents continue working as before. The migration from SiriKit to App Intents actually strengthens Shortcuts support because App Intents is the shared framework powering Siri, Shortcuts, Spotlight, and Widgets. If you built Shortcuts support using the older Intent Definition files, Xcode 27 includes a converter to migrate those definitions to App Intents structs.
What happens to users still running iOS 26 or earlier after iOS 27 ships?
SiriKit continues to function normally on iOS 26 and earlier devices. The deprecation only affects devices running iOS 27 or later. This means you need a dual-framework strategy during the transition: maintain SiriKit for your iOS 26 install base while shipping App Intents for iOS 27 users. Conditional compilation with #available(iOS 27, *) is the recommended approach until your minimum deployment target moves forward.
Do I need to rewrite my app in Swift to use App Intents?
App Intents is a Swift-native framework and requires Swift for intent definitions, but you do not need to rewrite your entire app. You can define App Intents in Swift files within an Objective-C codebase using a bridging header. The @Parameter property wrappers and perform() methods must be Swift, but they can call into your existing Objective-C business logic. This is a targeted addition, not an application-wide rewrite.
How does MCP compare to App Intents, and which should I use?
MCP (Model Context Protocol) and App Intents are complementary distribution channels serving different priorities. App Intents is optimised for Apple’s ecosystem surfaces (Siri, Spotlight, Shortcuts, Widgets) and provides the richest conversational integration with Siri AI. MCP enables structured tool-use patterns that work across AI model providers. For apps where Siri discoverability is the goal, App Intents is the priority; use MCP when cross-platform AI agent compatibility matters more.
What if my app never used SiriKit in the first place?
You face no migration burden, but you should still evaluate App Intents adoption. Apps without any intent declarations are invisible to Siri AI voice interactions, Spotlight’s semantic index, and Apple Intelligence personalisation. Adding even a few App Intents, with companion App Entities and an AppShortcutsProvider, makes your app discoverable in the new AI-driven iOS ecosystem. The framework is additive, and you can start with a single intent.
Does the Privacy Manifest mean Apple can now access my app’s data through App Intents?
No. The Privacy Manifest is a declaration requirement, not a data access grant. You declare what data each intent accesses and for what purpose, enabling Apple to surface that information transparently to users and auditors. Apple’s three-tier architecture routes most requests on-device, with cloud routing only when necessary and under the stateless, non-persistent Private Cloud Compute model. The manifest increases transparency; it does not create new data pathways for Apple.
How do I test my App Intents against Siri AI before the iOS 27 public release?
The AppIntentsTesting framework, introduced at WWDC 2026, lets you validate intents programmatically through CI pipelines using makeIntent().run(), entities(matching:), and spotlightQuery(). For end-to-end Siri AI testing, you need access to the iOS 27 developer beta. Early testing during the beta cycle (June to September 2026) is essential to catch integration issues before the mid-August App Store review deadline.
Will App Intents work on iPadOS 27 and macOS 27 the same way as iOS?
Yes. App Intents is a unified framework across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27. The same intent definitions, App Entities, and App Schemas work on all three platforms without modification. The Privacy Manifest requirements and AppShortcutsProvider registration are also cross-platform. The main difference is that Siri AI’s full conversational capabilities may roll out on a different cadence per platform, so testing on each target OS is recommended.
Can I leave my SiriKit code in place until 2028 if I do not care about voice features?
You can, but you lose more than voice. SiriKit apps on iOS 27 also lose Spotlight indexing and Apple Intelligence personalisation, meaning your app content becomes invisible to system-wide search and contextual AI recommendations. If your app benefits from users finding its content through Spotlight or appearing in Siri suggestions, the effective deadline is September 2026, not 2028. The deprecation window concerns SDK removal, not user-facing functionality.
