To make AI, Apple is cooking with App Intents

Apple Intelligence will lean heavily into Apple’s existing work with App Intents and Shortcuts integrations. The app services App Intents provide will be combined with Apple Intelligence and supported by what your device knows about where you are, what you need and the things you usually do.

(It will all take place privately and on device, of course.)

What are App Intents?

“The App Intents framework provides functionality to deeply integrate your app’s actions and content with system experiences across platforms, including Siri, Spotlight, widgets, controls and more,” Apple has explained. That means App Intents can integrate your apps actions with Siri, Spotlight, and other apps, making it easier for users to get things done.

First announced in 2024, App Intents are already available across every app — and while not every app supports App Intents, Apple really wants developers to climb aboard. 

During a WWDC 2025 session, the company suggested App Intents as a way to make the key functionalities of your app available across the system. It calls those functionalities the “verbs” of any app. 

These can be combined with those from other third-parties and Apple apps for useful tasks, allowing users to access functionalities available in other apps from within a developer’s own app. That means offering users customized Spotlight results, custom actions for Apple Pencil Pro, contextually aware commands for the Action Button, interactive widgets and more. 

What should be interesting is that App Intents will make it possible to execute complex strings of actions/verbs on demand; for developers, App Intents is a two-way street enabling them to build far more complex app experiences than they could do alone, while also giving an app the power to reach out to users via other apps.

What about Siri?

App Intents are both Shortcuts and Siri compatible. And that’s really where I see them begin to shine, as it means App Intents can be executed via voice commands. Apple watcher Mark Gurman goes as far as to say that once complete, they will permit you to fully control your iPhone using only voice, including finding, editing, and sharing a photo.

In other words, you’ll be able to string Intents/Shortcuts from across multiple apps together on your behalf so you can get more complex tasks done just by asking your device. 

This was certainly what Apple’s 2024 announcement of a smarter Siri promised. And while that work has been seriously delayed, the company recently said it is going well, and it hopes to introduce the new tools in spring.

Unlocking the apps

The sticking point for App Intents is that they require app functionality (those “verbs”) to be unlocked and made available using Apple’s own APIs. The problem there is that some developers might be resistant to making such functionality available outside of their own app, as they fear loss of user engagement.

I think that resistance is part of the reason Apple is working with the big name developers behind some of the world’s most widely used apps. Bloomberg’s senior Apple sleuth tells us it is working with Uber, AllTrails, Threads, Amazon, Temu, YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp on this, so once these new features do appear, the “verbs” for the most widely used apps will be supported by the system. 

Of course, the danger here is that as the big apps become even more omnipresent across Apple’s and other systems, the opportunities for smaller third-party apps to intrude into the experience they provide will erode. After all, how do you make any task more convenient than asking Siri to make it happen? Will we end up with an iOS ecosystem that’s as commoditized as the web seems to have become, with only a few brands occupying the majority of online attention? What impact would such an outcome have on digital economies, particularly as online attention is detected and solutions provided almost automatically through AI?

Existential queries aside, working with these key developers will also give Apple better insight into any flaws in its software that might need rectifying as it moves toward the first public beta of these new Apple Intelligence features working through Siri. Given the challenges it has faced getting to this point, working with others might help its teams deliver on time. 

I’m interested to see how this unfolds.

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