Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2026: AI powers Safari, Shortcuts, and Photos
Safari now auto-groups tabs and creates custom extensions via text prompts.
Apple unveiled a broad set of Apple Intelligence features at WWDC 2026, embedding AI deeply into core iPhone apps. Safari gains automatic tab grouping by topic, page change monitoring, and the ability to generate custom browser extensions from a text description — no coding required. The Phone app can now pull context from Mail and Messages during a call, surfacing relevant information like flight details in real time, a direct answer to Google's Magic Cue. Shortcuts is overhauled with natural-language workflow creation: users describe what they want, and the app builds the automation automatically, bringing vibe coding to mainstream users.
Image Playground receives a significant upgrade with natural-language editing, photorealistic image generation, and a new API for third-party developers. Users can tap or brush to select objects, adjust image dimensions, and generate wallpapers or contact posters. Photos improves its cleanup tool with better infill, adds an AI expansion tool to extend photo edges, and introduces Spatial Reframing to reposition subjects using on-device spatial models. One-tap password updating in Safari completes the updates, with Apple handling the login change automatically through AI. These features rely entirely on on-device processing, emphasizing privacy as a key differentiator in the AI assistant wars.
- Safari gets AI tab grouping, page change monitoring, and text-prompt-based custom extension creation.
- Phone app gains cross-app context awareness, surfacing relevant Mail and Messages data during calls.
- Shortcuts now builds workflows from plain language descriptions; Image Playground adds photorealistic generation and object editing.
Why It Matters
Apple’s on-device AI makes the iPhone a proactive assistant, automating workflows and editing without sending data to the cloud.