LIVE: Apple’s WWDC 2026 keynote begins at 10:00 a.m. Pacific, and we are covering every announcement as it happens. Keep this page open and refresh for the latest. Newest updates are at the top.
Just arrived? See what time the keynote starts in your time zone and how to watch the livestream, then catch up on the 5 things actually worth watching for today.
Live Updates
11:35 a.m. PT · That’s a wrap on the WWDC 2026 keynote
And that is the keynote done. The short version of WWDC 2026: a deliberate “refinement year” built around a rebuilt, AI-powered Siri, which is free with a daily allowance, charges extra through iCloud+, and is not launching in the EU at first. Around it sits macOS Golden Gate marking the official end of Intel Macs, a no-drops device list that keeps the iPhone 11 alive on iOS 27, and a deep bench of Apple Intelligence features spread across Messages, Safari, Shortcuts, Passwords and more. It all lands this Fall. Thanks for following along with us. Scroll down for the full blow-by-blow, and stay tuned for our complete breakdown and key-announcements summary.
11:23 a.m. PT · When can you get it all? This Fall
And there is the timing. iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS Golden Gate, watchOS 27, tvOS 27 and visionOS 27 all land this Fall. For anyone new to Apple’s release rhythm, “Fall” is Apple-speak for September, arriving right alongside the new iPhone 18 Pro. Expect a developer beta today, a public beta in July for the brave, and the polished final versions in September. So if today’s features have you itching to upgrade, the wait is roughly three months.
11:14 a.m. PT · It’s macOS Golden Gate, and here is the full Apple Intelligence grid
Mystery solved. Remember Federighi’s marketing-team note and that “motoring northward” line earlier? The new Mac release is macOS Golden Gate. So the pre-show bets on macOS Emerald and macOS Big Bear were both wide of the mark, and Apple has reached for another northern California landmark instead. Here is everything new in macOS Golden Gate.
Apple also put up the full, frankly enormous grid of Apple Intelligence features arriving across iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS Golden Gate. A quick scan of the highlights: App Actions, on-screen awareness, Siri AI in CarPlay and with AirPods, systemwide automatic proofreading, Smart Reply in your own writing style, more powerful Image Playground and Genmoji, Call Context, richer Shortcuts automations, and a real push on accessibility with things like Rich image details in VoiceOver and Ask Magnifier about your surroundings. Here is the lot:
11:12 a.m. PT · The catch: the new Siri will not launch in the EU on iPhone or iPad
An important caveat buried in all the AI excitement: the new Siri will not be available in the European Union on iOS and iPadOS, at least to begin with. That is a very large number of customers shut out of the keynote’s headline feature. Apple did not spell out the reason on stage, but it fits the pattern of the last couple of years, where Apple Intelligence features have repeatedly been held back from the EU against the backdrop of the bloc’s Digital Markets Act and the regulatory wrangling that comes with it. If you are an iPhone or iPad user in Europe, the single biggest reason to upgrade may not actually reach you for a while. More on the EU exclusion here.
11:11 a.m. PT · Image Playground grows up: realistic styles, any size, everywhere
Image Playground was one of the weaker launch features of Apple Intelligence: a bit limited, a bit cartoonish, and easy to forget about. In iOS 27 it finally looks like the version it should have been all along. You can now generate images in pretty much any style, including far more realistic ones, at pretty much any size, and it is being woven across nearly all of Apple’s platforms instead of sitting in its own corner. We will want to see how the actual output stacks up against the likes of Midjourney and Google’s tools, but on stage at least, this has gone from novelty to something that looks genuinely usable.
11:09 a.m. PT · The new Siri is free, but with daily limits and a paid tier
Here is the part a lot of people have been wondering about: the money. The revamped, AI-powered Siri will be free with the new OS release, but with some daily restrictions on how much you can use it. Need more than that? Apple will sell you additional usage through iCloud+, folding the heavy-use tier into the subscription it already offers. It is a sensible enough model, free for everyday questions, paid if you lean on it hard, and it lines up with how the rest of the AI industry is pricing its assistants. The thing worth watching is exactly how generous, or how stingy, those daily limits turn out to be. Full breakdown: is the new Siri free?
11:04 a.m. PT · Shortcuts can finally be built with plain language
Here is one a lot of us have been hoping and praying for. The Shortcuts app, brilliant but famously fiddly since it arrived back in 2018, now lets you build a shortcut just by describing what you want in plain language. Instead of hand-stacking a tower of actions and variables, you type something like “when I leave work, message Pedro that I’m on my way and send my ETA,” and it assembles the shortcut for you. If it works reliably, that takes Shortcuts from a power-user toy to something anyone can actually use, exactly the accessibility leap the feature has needed for years.
11:02 a.m. PT · Booking details surface right inside a phone call
This is a genuinely clever one. If you are on a call and the person asks for details about a booking or reservation, say you are on the phone to an airline about a flight, Apple Intelligence pulls the relevant details up right inside the call screen. No more putting the call on speaker while you scramble through Mail for a confirmation number. Apple’s example shows a flight confirmation, the booking reference, and the JFK to RAK route and times, lifted automatically from Mail and dropped straight into the in-call interface. If it works as smoothly as the demo, it is a properly useful bit of everyday magic.
11:01 a.m. PT · A big Passwords upgrade: automatic strong-password swaps
A meaningful security win in the Passwords app. It can now automatically update eligible accounts to strong passwords for you, taking away the tedious manual slog of changing weak or reused passwords one site at a time. Better still, Apple Intelligence then re-signs you back into those accounts with the new credentials, so you are not left locked out of your own logins after the swap. For anyone sitting on a pile of dodgy old passwords they have been meaning to fix, this is the rare feature that actually does the work for you.
10:59 a.m. PT · Messages gets Apple Intelligence: one-tap reminders, events and photo search
Messages is getting a real dose of Apple Intelligence that reads the context of your chat and surfaces one-tap suggestions. Someone fires over a plan and Messages offers to turn it straight into an event, a reminder or a note. In Apple’s example it takes “Coffee catch-up with Elena at Magic Donuts & Coffee this Thursday at 11am” and builds a complete calendar event from it, the right date, time and location all filled in. There is also a smarter photo finder: when someone asks for pictures, you tap search and it digs through your library by keyword, location and the people in the shots.
Messages uses Apple [Intelligence] in context of your conversations and offers one-tap suggestions, making it easier than ever to get things done, like creating a reminder or a note, or if someone asks for photos, Messages helps you find the right ones. Just tap search for photos, and messages recognizes keywords, locations, and people named in your library to find the best options.
Apple
10:57 a.m. PT · Apple Intelligence will tidy your Safari tab chaos
This one is for the tab hoarders, and you know who you are. Apple Intelligence can now automatically organize your open Safari tabs into categories, taking that endless wall of tabs and sorting it into sensible groups without you lifting a finger. If your Safari looks anything like the image below on a normal Tuesday, this might quietly be the most personally useful thing in the whole keynote.
10:56 a.m. PT · Another look at the new Siri assistant on the Mac
And here is a closer look at how the revamped Siri shows up on macOS. Instead of a floating orb that bounces you out to a separate window, Siri turns up as an in-context assistant right inside your apps. Here it is helping compose and edit a document in Pages through an “Edit with Siri” panel. This is the more useful, more integrated Siri Apple has been promising for two years, finally on screen and doing real work.
10:27 a.m. PT · One you might have missed: a status is coming to Messages
Easy to lose in that rapid-fire feature run, so here it is on its own. iOS 27 is adding a status to Messages: a quick control that lets you set a little status, a rose in Apple’s example, that shows up next to your name at the top of the conversation for the people you are chatting with. Think of it as a lightweight way to signal what you are up to without actually sending a message. A nice social touch in an update that has otherwise been heavy on plumbing and polish.
10:15 a.m. PT · Search gets rebuilt across Spotlight, Photos and Mail
A big change under the hood: Apple says search has been “rebuilt” across Spotlight, Photos and Mail, sitting on top of brand new search infrastructure.
After you update, our new search infrastructure goes to work indexing the content of your device.
When you go to search, you’ll find what you’re looking for.
Craig Federighi
Translation: faster, more reliable results, and hopefully fewer of those moments where you know a file exists but Spotlight swears blind it does not.
10:14 a.m. PT · Smarter wi-fi handoff and an overdue iMessage fix
Two quiet quality-of-life wins. Your iPhone is getting smarter about when to stay on a wi-fi network and when to cut it loose and fall back to your carrier, which should mean less time stranded on those “connected, but nothing loads” networks. And in a fix people have wanted for years, large photo transfers in iMessage will no longer hold up the entire chat while they upload, or fail to.
10:13 a.m. PT · iOS 27 runs on iPhone 11 and newer. Nothing dropped.
Here is the one a lot of you were nervous about, and it is good news. iOS 27 supports the iPhone 11 and every model that ran iOS 26. No devices get cut this year. Federighi, on how they pulled it off:
This year we further optimized it, so it’s even more efficient when handling performance-intensive workloads, and not only that, but we also figured out a way to bring it to older models all the way back to iPhone 11, and yes, that does mean that iOS 27 is supported on iPhone 11 and all of the same iPhone models as iOS 26. This continues our industry-leading support and means iOS 27 is available to more users than any iOS release ever.
Craig Federighi
So the pre-show rumours that iOS 27 would quietly drop the iPhone 11 and the SE were wide of the mark. If you own an iPhone 11 or anything newer, you are getting this update. See the full iOS 27 compatibility list.
10:12 a.m. PT · A reworked CPU scheduler to make older iPhones feel faster
On performance, Apple is overhauling the CPU scheduler, the part of the system that decides what your phone works on and exactly when. Federighi:
We’re also doing something that will make older iPhones feel even more responsive, which has to do with our CPU scheduler. The CPU scheduler is a key system component that manages CPU resources across workloads as you use your iPhone throughout your day, even when you’re doing a ton of things at once, requiring a whole lot of compute. The CPU scheduler ensures the right work is executed at precisely the right time.
Craig Federighi
The headline numbers Apple put on screen:
- New photos appear up to 70% faster in the Photo Library.
- AirDrop photo transfers happen up to 80% faster.
- Browsing and transferring items from iPad Files to an external drive starts 5x faster, which Apple says is as quick as Finder on a Mac.
10:11 a.m. PT · A transparency slider for Liquid Glass, at last
Here is that “sweating the details” promise in action. iOS 27 is getting a slider that lets you dial the transparency of the Liquid Glass interface up and down, anywhere from fully opaque to completely clear. If you found last year’s glassy look a little too see-through and tough to read in places, this is exactly the control you have been asking for. A small feature, but a telling one, and a direct answer to one of the loudest complaints about the redesign.
10:10 a.m. PT · The “note” from marketing, and the real theme of the day: refinement
Federighi keeps the macOS bit running. The marketing team, he explains, has once again vanished into the wild before handing over the goods:
Last I saw them, they just spilled out of their recently installed Apple Park Experiential ideation yurt, and piled into their microbus. I tried to catch them, but they just handed me this note out the window before motoring northward. So, here’s all I’ve got…
Craig Federighi
And the note turns out to be the thesis statement for the entire keynote. Forget fireworks for a second: this is shaping up to be a polish-and-refinement year.
Instead of just introducing a host of new features, we’re also taking the features you already rely on and making them even better, because we believe the best operating systems aren’t just built on big breakthroughs, they’re built on sweating the details.
Attention to detail has always been core to Apple’s DNA, and this year our teams doubled down on our relentless dedication to make the experience feel more polished and intuitive. We scoured every part of the OS for opportunities to refine our systems, from the UI to the foundations. Nothing was off limits, no enhancement too small. We made things faster, smoother, even easier to use, and we took care of a bunch of things you’ve been asking about.
The note from Apple’s marketing team, read aloud by Craig Federighi
If you had “refinement year” on your bingo card, collect your winnings. That language about fixing “a bunch of things you’ve been asking about” is Apple openly acknowledging the bugs and rough edges, which is a notable change of tone in itself.
10:08 a.m. PT · Federighi teases the macOS 27 name, then leaves us hanging
Right on cue, Craig Federighi rolls into one of the great WWDC traditions: the annual bit about Apple’s marketing team and their gloriously eccentric approach to naming macOS releases. This year, though, he is playing coy.
Speaking of macOS, for those of you that are WWDC regulars, you of course know that this is the moment where I relay the latest exploits of Apple’s crack marketing team, and their, shall we say, unconventional methods for naming macOS releases. In this case, I’m afraid the story is incomplete.
Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering
Translation: the name is coming, but he is going to make us sweat for it. The pre-show betting was split between macOS Emerald and macOS Big Bear, so consider this the slow drumroll. We will update the second he stops teasing and actually says it.
10:06 a.m. PT · Yes, we are getting Siri today. Hold the front page.
And we are off. A few minutes into the keynote, Apple has confirmed what roughly everyone on the planet already assumed: yes, Siri is on the agenda today. Try to contain your shock. The revamped, AI-powered Siri has been the most anticipated, most delayed and most leaked storyline of this entire event, so its appearance is about as surprising as the sun coming up. The questions that actually matter are the ones still hanging: how much of it ships, when normal people get it, and whether it finally lives up to two years of promises. Stay with us.
9:32 a.m. PT · Will John Ternus join the warm-up?
One small thing we are watching as the clock ticks down. Tim Cook and Craig Federighi normally appear live in front of the big screen at Apple Park to say a few words before the pre-recorded keynote video rolls. The question this year is whether John Ternus, the man stepping into the CEO chair in September, joins them up there. Ternus was reportedly out working the room with attendees last night, and with the handover already under way, this would be a natural moment to hand him the emcee mic for the first time. We will know in a few minutes.
9:29 a.m. PT · Apple’s store and dev portal are still up
A small but telling detail with just over half an hour on the clock: both the Apple Developer portal and the Apple Store website are still live and behaving completely normally. That is a little unusual. Apple almost always pulls the shutters down on both for “maintenance” in the hours before a keynote, the digital version of clearing the stage before the show. We are expecting the familiar “be right back” holding screens to drop any minute now. If they somehow stay up through the whole keynote, that is a curiosity all of its own.
9:24 a.m. PT · So, how will Apple open the show?
While we wait for the lights to drop, a word on the traditional WWDC warm-up act. Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief and the keynote’s unofficial court jester, has turned the cold open into a sport of its own. Last year he paid tribute to the F1 movie by tearing around the roof of Apple Park in a racecar, then ripped off his helmet to reveal a hairdo that deserved its own warning label. The year before that he leapt out of a plane flown by Phil Schiller. Dig back a little further and you get the triple-necked electric guitar and the slow-motion Baywatch jog, though to be fair those were mid-show gags rather than openers, back when Apple still started these things with a straight face.
So what is the bit this year? Follow the clues and they point straight at football. The FIFA World Cup gets underway later this week, Apple has just loaded a stack of tournament features into Apple Sports, and Ted Lasso is lacing its boots back up for a fourth season in August. That is a lot of soccer floating around for a company that loves to pin its keynote to whatever happens to be in the cultural water.
Our money is on Federighi strolling out in an AFC Richmond shirt, thumping a ball over Apple Park, then handing off to a misty-eyed Jason Sudeikis for a few words on the power of self-belief and the bold new future of watchOS. We find out in about half an hour. Over to you, Craig.
9:15 a.m. PT · We are live
Doors are about to open. The keynote kicks off at 10:00 a.m. Pacific (1:00 p.m. Eastern, 6:00 p.m. UK). We will post every major announcement here as it lands, newest at the top, so keep refreshing.
