Backend code discovered by developer Nicolás Alvarez and confirmed by MacRumors shows Apple is continuing to develop a feature that may let users generate custom Shortcuts actions using Apple Intelligence models. The code confirms active development, not a finished product. Apple has not confirmed the feature for release.
The signal matters because of what Apple promised and then missed. At WWDC 2024, Apple said an improved Siri would have personal context awareness and the ability to take action across apps. Those capabilities never shipped. In March 2025, Apple said the Siri upgrades would take longer than expected. Then, at WWDC 2025, Craig Federighi told The Verge the first attempt "didn't converge quality-wise" to Apple's standard, and Greg Joswiak clarified that the rescheduled target was 2026. WWDC 2026 is now approaching.
iOS 27 is also rumored to bring AI-generated wallpapers, covered briefly below. The Shortcuts feature is the more consequential story.
What iOS 27 AI shortcuts may actually do and what remains unanswered
The Shortcuts app lets users build multi-step automations, from sending messages to controlling smart home devices, but constructing those workflows requires manually selecting and sequencing each action. That friction has kept Shortcuts a niche tool for technically patient users since Apple acquired the original Workflow app in 2017. The feature under development would let users issue a voice command in natural language and have Apple Intelligence generate the workflow for them.
iOS 26 took a smaller step in this direction, adding Apple Intelligence support inside Shortcuts so users could incorporate AI models as one component of an automation they still built themselves. The iOS 27 version would reportedly invert that relationship, with AI potentially responsible for full construction from a plain-language request. That is not an incremental difference.
Current reporting leaves several consequential questions open:
Editable or disposable? Would AI-generated shortcuts produce reusable workflows a user can inspect, modify, and run again, or one-time commands that execute and vanish? The first would make Shortcuts genuinely accessible to a mainstream audience. The second produces the appearance of automation without the substance.
Which apps and data? Whether the feature can access messages, calendar, files, or home controls at launch determines whether it functions as a daily tool or a carefully scoped demo. No source has reported on the planned scope.
Day one or later? Apple reportedly aims to ship the rebuilt Siri chatbot in the initial iOS 27 release in September. Whether the Shortcuts generator specifically ships with that release is unconfirmed.
The practical stakes are concrete. Silencing notifications during calendar-blocked time, texting a contact automatically when you leave a location, logging a daily expense to a spreadsheet: these are multi-step automations most users currently cannot build. If AI generation works and produces reusable workflows, they become accessible to anyone who can describe what they want. The addressable audience is not the power users who already know Shortcuts. It is the much larger group who tried it once, couldn't figure it out, and gave up.
The reliability gap Apple has to close
Federighi was direct at WWDC 2025. "When it comes to automating capabilities on devices in a reliable way, no one's doing it really well right now," he told The Verge. Apple wanted the feature to be "really, really reliable," and the error rate during development was unacceptable. For writing assistance, a wrong output is a minor inconvenience. For an AI that sends messages, triggers home automations, or logs personal data on a user's behalf, the same error rate is a different category of problem.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman had originally reported Apple was targeting AI-driven Shortcuts for a 2025 launch before delays pushed the timeline to 2026. MacRumors noted in the same report that confirmed Alvarez's discovery. Joswiak explained why the first attempt was pulled: "It would've been more disappointing to ship something that didn't hit our quality standard, that had an error rate that we felt was unacceptable," he told The Verge. Apple arrives at WWDC carrying specific expectations on a specific capability it has already missed once.
There is also an unresolved infrastructure question. Apple's original architecture for Apple Intelligence routes complex requests through Private Cloud Compute on Apple silicon servers, with cryptographic guarantees that user data is not retained, per Apple's previous announcement.
A January report from Bloomberg said the rebuilt Siri chatbot may rely heavily on a custom Google Gemini model, with Apple and Google reportedly discussing hosting the chatbot on Google's servers. These two accounts have not been reconciled publicly. For a feature that would construct automations drawing on calendar events, messages, location, and device controls, that gap between Apple's stated privacy architecture and its reported infrastructure direction is not an abstract concern. It is a question WWDC needs to answer directly.
Where the wallpaper rumor fits
Apple already generates images on-device through Image Playground, available system-wide and as a standalone app, with all processing kept local, per Apple's 2024 announcement. The rebuilt Siri chatbot expected in iOS 27 would reportedly also be capable of generating images, Bloomberg reported via MacRumors in January. Routing that capability to a wallpaper surface is a plausible inference; no source has directly confirmed an iOS 27 AI wallpaper generator as a distinct feature.
The contrast with the Shortcuts story is worth stating plainly. Generating a wallpaper is a single creative output with no downstream consequences if the image is wrong; try again. Generating a shortcut that sends messages, moves files, or triggers home devices based on what the AI understood is a fundamentally different category, one where reliability, data access scope, and the ability to inspect the output determine whether users can trust it at all.
What WWDC needs to answer
Apple reportedly plans to unveil the rebuilt Siri at WWDC 2026 and release iOS 27 in September, MacRumors reported, though both the announcement and the release timeline remain reported expectations rather than confirmed dates.
Three questions will determine whether the Shortcuts feature is real or a preview of something still months away: Will AI-generated shortcuts produce editable, reusable workflows, or commands that execute once and disappear? Which apps and data domains will be in scope at launch? And will it ship in the initial iOS 27 release, or arrive later?
Federighi said no one is solving reliable device automation well right now, and that Apple wanted to be first and do it best. WWDC is where that claim either gets demonstrated or deferred again.
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