Siri’s next trick could turn your voice into a remote for iPhone apps

Tell Siri what you want it to do, and it’ll do it

According to Bloomberg’s ever-accurate Mark Gurman, citing sources “familiar with the matter”, Apple is currently testing the ability for Siri to directly control a variety of third-party iPhone apps. 

These include popular apps like Uber, YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook, Threads, Temu and even a few games alongside Apple’s own first-party apps.

The goal, according to Gurman, is for Siri to navigate and ‘use’ these apps on your behalf. 

That means Siri could, for example, find, edit and send a specific photo, or comment on a post on Facebook on your behalf. It could also reply to incoming WhatsApp messages for you, and even order you an Uber to an upcoming calendar event. The possibilities here are quite exciting. 

Underpinning this impressive new tech is an expanded App Intents system working in tandem with Apple Intelligence to understand context, understand what’s on screen and carry out actions on your behalf. At least, that’s how it’s said to be working in tests behind closed doors at Apple Park.

Apple is being cautious though

The idea of getting Siri to perform monotonous tasks on your iPhone on your behalf is an exciting one. I’d love for my phone to automatically go through my emails and surface only important ones, or for Siri to find that one TikTok that I liked a week ago so that I can show my friend. 

However, it’s also a dangerous prospect; what if Siri misunderstands your request and, say, transfers your bank savings to the wrong person, or deletes valuable health data instead of summarising it? 

It’s risks like those causing Apple to weigh up limits – or outright exclusions – for sensitive app categories like banking and health at launch, reflecting these internal concerns about accuracy in particularly high-stake scenarios. When Siri starts pushing buttons on your behalf, guardrails really matter. 

We’ve got a while to wait yet

While it’s an exciting prospect for iPhone users, don’t get too excited just yet. For one, the feature is still in its internal testing phase and there’s every possibility that Apple decides to take the upgraded Siri in another direction by the time it’s released to users.

That said, Gurman believes that a phased rollout of the functionality – packaged as part of the Siri upgrade – is said to arrive in the US with iOS 26.4 sometime around March or April 2026. 

Apple has publicly said that the new Siri is due “in the coming year”, so there could be some weight to the release schedule. We’ll just have to wait and see for now, though.