Apple’s Shortcuts app has existed on the iPhone since 2018, and most people have never built a single one.
Not because the app is hidden or broken, but because creating a shortcut has always required a kind of patience that casual users simply do not have.
You had to learn the logic, chain the steps, and troubleshoot when something broke. That is a lot of friction for something that was supposed to save you time.
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iOS 27 is reportedly changing that in a way that feels almost obvious in hindsight. Apple is adding a plain-language prompt inside Shortcuts that asks you one simple question: what do you want your shortcut to do?
You type out your answer like you would explain it to a friend, Siri builds the workflow, and it lands on your phone ready to use.
Shortcuts has long been one of the most powerful tools on iOS and also one of the least used. Putting AI on top of it could finally make it useful to regular users, rather than the small group of people willing to learn how it all works.
Separately, Apple is folding AI image generation into the wallpaper picker. When you go to set a new background, you will have the option to generate something original through Image Playground rather than choosing from a library.
Apple is reportedly testing models that produce noticeably more realistic images than the current version of Image Playground, so the results could look quite different from the cartoony outputs people have seen so far.
Whether that matters to you probably depends on how often you actually change your wallpaper. For people who love personalizing their phones, it is a fun addition. For everyone else, it will sit quietly in a menu they never open.
Both features are expected to get their formal reveal at Apple’s WWDC keynote on June 8. The Shortcuts upgrade in particular feels like it could become one of those quiet iOS features that people discover six months after launch and cannot believe they lived without.
