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At its Worldwide Developers Conference Monday, Apple introduced iPadOS 27, which will infuse more AI features into the system running its iPad and iPad Pro tablets.
In addition to long-awaited advancements to the personal assistant Siri, the main improvements in the iPad’s operating system focus less on big feature additions and more on smoothing out your everyday activities. Many of these enhancements are being added throughout Apple’s product lineup, from iPhones to Macs.
They include a Spotlight expansion that brings the system-level search feature in line with Spotlight on MacOS and the new Siri AI features, the ability to hand over organization of tabs in Safari to AI, and a method of creating automations in the Shortcuts app by writing or speaking requests using natural language dictation.
Apple is expected to release the iPadOS 27 developer beta today, and the final version will ship in September or October if the company follows its traditional release schedule.
Spotlight search gets a Siri boost
Spotlight, the search bar that appears when you swipe down from the middle of the iPad screen, is due to get smarter in iPadOS 27, getting closer in features to what currently exists in MacOS. In addition to locating apps, files and documents stored on the device, the new Spotlight search will let you type natural-language requests for Siri AI to process. Apple also says it has rearchitected the index of what’s on your device, and new information is indexed more quickly.
It also becomes a place to ask Siri to act on information, such as delivering the latest weather and adding calendar appointments. Siri’s Visual Intelligence can be activated by taking a screenshot or, coming later, pointing the camera at objects around you.
Let AI organize your tabs in Safari
How much time do you spend trying to track down a website’s tab in Safari that you’re sure you’ve opened but can’t locate? It’s all too easy to accumulate dozens of tabs when shopping or researching topics. The new Organize Tabs feature in Safari, which will be implemented across Apple’s devices, is designed to do the sorting for you, making it easier to bring up tabs more quickly.
It resembles the Use Stacks feature on MacOS, where a mess of document icons on the Desktop gets sorted into groups based on file types like images or PDF documents, or other criteria such as modification date.
Create Shortcuts without feeling like you’re building flowcharts
The Shortcuts app on the iPad, iPhone and Mac is a powerful way to automate actions, but it always requires that you think like you’re building scaffolding. That makes sense for an app that’s based on logic — for instance, take a photo, resize its longest dimension to 2,048 pixels and save it as a highly compressed JPEG. But that approach has, ironically, made creating shortcuts labor-intensive and time-consuming.
In iPadOS 27, building on the natural-language capabilities of Siri AI, you’ll be able to be more conversational about what you want Shortcuts to do.
You might need to get a new iPad to run iPadOS 27, though
Apple made a big deal about keeping support for iOS 27 all the way back to 2019’s iPhone 11, but that doesn’t apply to the iPad line. To run the latest operating system, you’ll need one of the following models:
- iPad Pro (M4 and later)
- iPad Pro 12.9‑inch (4th generation and later)
- iPad Pro 11‑inch (2nd generation and later)
- iPad Air 13-inch (M2 and later)
- iPad Air 11-inch (M2, M3, and M4)
- iPad Air 11-inch (4th generation and later)
- iPad (A16)
- iPad (9th generation and later)
- iPad Mini (A17 Pro)
- iPad Mini (6th generation and later)
Be sure to check all the breaking news from the conference at CNET’s WWDC live blog.
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