iOS 26 screenshots might be an intriguing preview of Apple’s delayed Siri rework

When it launched, Apple ‘s Visual Intelligence characteristic allowed you to level your suitable cellphone’s digital camera at issues round you and both carry out a Google Picture Search or ask questions through ChatGPT. At WWDC 2025, the corporate confirmed off updates to broaden the usefulness of Visible Intelligence, largely by embedding it into the screenshots system. To cite the company’s press release, “Visible intelligence already helps customers find out about objects and locations round them utilizing their iPhone digital camera, and it now allows customers to do extra, quicker, with the content material on their iPhone display screen.”

This jogged my memory of the “onscreen consciousness” that Apple described as one among Siri’s capabilities when it introduced Apple Intelligence final 12 months. In that press launch, the corporate stated, “With onscreen consciousness, Siri will have the ability to perceive and take motion with customers’ content material in additional apps over time.” Although it is not fairly the identical, the up to date screenshot-based Visible Intelligence roughly permits on your iPhone to serve up contextual actions out of your onscreen content material, simply not through Siri.

In a manner, it is smart. Most individuals are already accustomed to taking a screenshot once they need to share or save necessary data they noticed on an internet site or Instagram put up. Integrating Apple Intelligence actions right here would theoretically put the instruments the place you anticipate them, quite than make customers discuss to Siri (or look forward to the replace to roll out).

Principally, in iOS 26 (on devices that support Apple Intelligence), urgent the ability and quantity down buttons to take a screenshot will lead to a brand new web page being pulled up. As a substitute of the thumbnail of your saved picture showing within the backside left, you may see the image take up virtually all the show, with choices round it for modifying, sharing or saving the file, in addition to getting Apple Intelligence-based solutions and actions on the backside. Within the backside left and proper corners sit choices for asking ChatGPT and doing a Google Picture Search respectively.

Relying on what’s in your screenshot, Apple Intelligence can recommend varied actions under your picture. This may be asking the place to purchase a similar-looking merchandise, including an occasion to your calendar or figuring out forms of vegetation, animals or meals, as an example. If there’s rather a lot occurring in your screenshot, you possibly can draw on an merchandise to focus on it (just like how you choose an object to erase in Photographs) and get data particular to that a part of the picture.

Third-party apps or providers which have enabled App Intents, like Google, Etsy and Pinterest, can even seem right here so you possibly can perform actions inside this area too. For instance, should you’ve discovered a bookend you want, taken a screenshot and recognized it, you possibly can store for it on Etsy or pin it on Pinterest.

One facet of this replace to Visible Intelligence that provides me pause is that, for individuals like me who screenshot mindlessly and do not need to do something apart from get receipts, this would possibly add a irritating step between capturing a screenshot and saving it to Photographs. It sounds such as you could possibly flip off this interface and keep on with the present screenshot system, although.

The examples that Apple gave for Siri’s capacity to grasp what’s in your display screen felt considerably comparable. In its press launch from final 12 months, Apple stated “For instance, if a pal texts a consumer their new handle in Messages, the receiver can say, ‘Add this handle to his contact card.'”

Like Visible Intelligence in screenshots, this includes scanning the onscreen content material for pertinent data and serving to you set it in a spot (like Contacts or Calendar) the place it is most helpful. Nevertheless, the promise of Siri’s new period was extra about interacting with all components of your cellphone, throughout first- and third-party apps alike. So you could possibly ask the assistant to open an article you added to your Studying Checklist in Safari or ship images from a specified occasion to a contact.

It is clear Apple has but to ship these developments to Siri, and like Craig Federighi stated on the WWDC 2025 keynote, these would possibly only be discussed later this year. Nonetheless, as we await that standing replace, the adjustments coming to screenshots may be a preview of issues to come back.

If you happen to purchase one thing via a hyperlink on this article, we might earn fee.