iOS 27's Siri Reads Across Your Apps, and It Should Have Shipped Switched Off

The feature is a real improvement. The default is the problem.

With iOS 27, the new AI-based Siri connects information from Messages, Mail, Calendar, Notes, Reminders, Photos and Files to answer questions it could not answer before. It uses the App Intents framework instead of the old SiriKit. You can limit it app by app (Settings > Apps > the app > Search), go back to “classic Siri” from Screen Time, or turn Siri off entirely.

An assistant that crosses apps and reads your content can be good or bad, depending on who is holding the phone. Having an assistant on your phone is not wrong, and this is a genuine upgrade in what it can do. But options like this should arrive switched off. If you do not want it, you should not have to hunt for the way out. So why does it come enabled by default?

The way out is the second problem. The controls sit in three different menus, depending on how much access you want to close. I will not claim to know Apple’s intent, but the result feels like an attempt to get people to leave it on. If few people find all three menus, the default decides for everyone else.

I have not tested iOS 27, so I cannot tell you how well the cross-app answers work day to day. My verdict: good feature, wrong default. If you care about your privacy, spend ten minutes in Settings before you use it. The sources are linked below.