Even beta testers will have to wait until next year for the big Siri upgrade

The iOS 18 betas have brought a number of worthwhile new features, but most of us are waiting impatiently for Apple Intelligence – in particular, the big Siri upgrade we’re expecting.

There’s been no sign of any significant AI features so far, and a report over the weekend suggests that even those on the developer beta won’t get to try the new Siri until next year …

The upcoming big Siri upgrade

Even before WWDC, leaks gave us a pretty good idea of what to expect from a ground-up revamp of Apple’s intelligent assistant:

• iOS 18 Siri will better understand people, events, locations
• iOS 18: Siri to gain extensive knowledge to trigger individual app functions

Sure enough, Apple confirmed these during the keynote presentation. We recently rounded up all the improvements we can expect, and the bottom-line for many of them is that Siri will have a much more human-like grasp of context.

It will finally understand things like:

• “Send the photos from the party on Saturday to Josh”
• “Set a reminder for—oh wait no, set an alarm for 5 minutes. Actually, make that 10.”
• “Turn on the bedroom light,” followed by, “Oh and dim it to 50%”
• “Send this article [the one you’re looking at in an app] to Dave”

Won’t officially launch until spring 2025

While we’ll get new iPhones in September as usual, and Apple will almost certainly hype their ability to run certain Apple Intelligence features right away, it seems buyers will have a long wait until they can take advantage of a new, smarter Siri.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said last month that most Siri improvements won’t arrive until 2025, and he’s now gotten a little more specific, stating that the official rollout will be sometime in the spring.

Developer beta will get the new Siri in January

Even if you’re running the developer beta of iOS 18, you’re still not likely to be able to use the new Siri this year.

Siri features are likely to go into beta testing for developers in January and then debut publicly around the springtime — part of an iOS 18.4 upgrade that’s already in the works. Other Siri features, such as a new design and ChatGPT integration, will be coming later this year.

Image: 9to5Mac collage using images from Apple and Lubomirkin on Unsplash