iOS 27 introduces on-device AI-generated subtitles that automatically transcribe or translate audio/subtitles during video playback, plus a new subtitle style preview API that lets users audition caption styles without leaving the player.
ā¢ Generated subtitles are created live, on-device via Speech-to-Text or translation models ā no server round-trips, no extra code required to activate them
ā¢ Subtitle style preview (new AVPlayerLayer API) lets users instantly see how each caption style looks while watching, dramatically improving accessibility
ā¢ Both features work across HLS live streams, VOD, and file-based content, meaning virtually every video app benefits automatically
Foundation Models is a new Apple framework introduced in iOS 27 that gives developers on-device access to the same Apple Intelligence language model powering system features, enabling text generation, structured output, and tool-calling entirely on-device without a network connection.
Visual Intelligence brings iOS 17's Visual Look Up capabilities to a new developer-facing API surface in iOS 27, letting apps pipe live camera frames or static images through on-device scene understanding to extract subjects, text, barcodes, and rich semantic labels without any cloud round-trip.
iOS 27 opens the Foundation Models framework to third-party LLM providers via a new public LanguageModel protocol, enabling anyone to integrate custom, server-based, or open-source models using the same Swift API as Apple's on-device system model.
In-depth guide
iOS 27 On-Device AI & Apple Intelligence āApp Schemas let developers describe their app's content and actions using pre-defined domain schemas (like the Calendar domain) so Siri can understand, search, and act on app data without custom NLP. Entities conforming to IndexedEntity are donated to Spotlight's semantic index, enabling natural-language queries over app content.