5 iPhone features you should be using after updating to iOS 27

iOS 27 just made your iPhone a lot more capable.

Adnan Ahmed for Engadget

The iPhone is easy to recommend to anyone looking for great smartphone hardware and long-term software support. The previous few iOS releases, however, have been pretty janky. With iOS 27, Apple therefore shifted its focus to ironing out bugs and improving overall stability rather than cramming in another round of flashy new features, and a good chunk of the WWDC 2026 keynote covered improvements such as snappier app launch times, faster AirDrop transfers and better memory management.

Apple’s commitment to software updates also means iOS 27 compatibility extends all the way back to the iPhone 11, which is great news since iOS 26 would have been a terrible final major update to be stuck on. If you haven’t already updated your iPhone, you can do so by navigating to Settings > General > Software Update.

Not much has changed visually, which makes sense since Apple only recently overhauled its design language with Liquid Glass. There is now a system-wide transparency slider, though, which many users had been asking about. Reports about battery life are mixed — some say they’re getting less screen-on time than before, while others haven’t had issues. Personally, iOS 27 has been such a blessing performance-wise on my aging iPhone 15 Pro Max that I’m willing to put up with slightly worse battery life.

Of course, stability upgrades aren’t the only thing Apple introduced with iOS 27. The update also brings a handful of useful tidbits, and here are five features you should definitely check out after updating your iPhone.

You can now use Apple Intelligence to create shortcuts

Adnan Ahmed for Engadget

Apple Intelligence has had a rocky start. After all, it took Apple two whole iOS generations to deliver on its promises of a more capable Siri. Most of the Apple Intelligence suite has been pretty underwhelming, unless you’re one of the five people who enjoy generating custom emojis using Genmoji, but iOS 27 changes that. The Shortcuts app has received a major upgrade, and Apple Intelligence might finally have a genuinely useful feature to show for itself.

You’ve been able to create pretty complex shortcuts and automations on iOS for a while now, and you can even import shortcuts that others have created and shared. iOS 27 now lets you create shortcuts using natural language prompts, which Apple Intelligence handles. When you launch the app and tap the + button, you can start describing the shortcut you want.

In my testing, the integration works pretty well and usually creates straightforward shortcuts without issues. That said, it pieces together the wrong actions sometimes and ends up with a shortcut that doesn’t do exactly what you want. Fortunately, you can still manually tweak shortcuts created using Apple Intelligence by tapping Edit.

You can also use Apple Intelligence actions within your shortcuts. Apple currently offers three AI models, including an on-device model for faster processing. You can create shortcuts for actions involving information extraction, summarization or generation of text and documents. The Cloud and Cloud Pro models do have a daily rate limit, though.

Custom Wallet passes are finally here

Adnan Ahmed for Engadget

The Wallet app on the iPhone stores your payment cards, transit passes, event and cinema tickets, digital keys and more. Until now, users could only add digital passes and credentials if the issuer supported Apple Wallet and provided a compatible pass. While several companies and services offered this convenience, plenty of issuers didn’t support it. As a collector, I was a bit disheartened to see my local IMAX theater stop offering Apple Wallet passes for movie tickets.

With iOS 27, you can create custom passes and add them to Apple Wallet. This is extremely handy for those with loyalty cards or gym memberships that don’t offer native Apple Wallet support. There are two ways you can create a pass in Apple Wallet, and Apple Intelligence comes in handy again here. On supported iPhone models, you can open an image (or screenshot) of a ticket or membership card with a barcode, swipe up and tap on Add Pass to Wallet.

If this option doesn’t show up, you can also open the Wallet app, tap the + icon at the top and select Create a Pass. Tap on Continue and take a photo of the ticket or ID card. The Wallet app will then use Visual Intelligence to extract relevant information from the image and create a pass. If you want to change the pass’ details or visuals, tap Edit.

Siri AI is a big improvement

Adnan Ahmed for Engadget

For years, Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri, has lagged behind competitors like Google Assistant. Slow responses are forgivable, but Siri would often struggle with even the most basic requests. Apple first promised a major Siri overhaul with iOS 18’s Apple Intelligence suite, but it’s taken over two years to come to fruition. iOS 27 comes with Siri AI, and users with a compatible iPhone can join the waitlist by navigating to Settings > Siri. The AI-powered virtual assistant is still in beta, but things are already starting to look promising.

Siri now understands and fulfills your requests noticeably better, with a huge improvement in how it handles follow-up queries. Though it still takes a hot second to process most requests, its responses are more relevant, and it doesn’t hit you with the “Here’s what I found on the web” reply as often. What’s more impressive about Siri AI, though, is the fact that it now understands personal context.

It can pull information from your messages, emails, photos and more to answer questions or perform tasks that previously required you to manually dig through different apps. Third-party app support is still limited, but if you mainly use iMessage and the default Mail app on your iPhone, you’ll likely find Siri to be one of iOS 27’s biggest improvements. The Camera app has a new Siri mode as well, which taps into Visual Intelligence to answer questions about whatever you’re pointing your camera at.

Tweak how your AirPods sound

Adnan Ahmed for Engadget

The AirPods are some of the most popular wireless earbuds on the market, and they work best when paired with an iPhone, iPad or Mac. Most modern AirPods models support Spatial Audio with head tracking, and several music streaming services like Apple Music and Tidal let you enjoy Dolby Atmos content. Sound quality is also widely regarded as one of their strongest selling points, particularly on the higher-end Pro models like the AirPods Pro 3 that we reviewed. With iOS 27, though, you c

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