Apple Intelligence is billed as a major leap forward for the iPhone, but until the promised Siri 2.0 arrives it’s actually kind of lacklustre. But in iOS 26, one of the more practical ways to make Siri smarter is through the Shortcuts app, where a new Apple Intelligence section has quietly appeared in the Gallery.
This section includes several pre-built examples that show how AI can be integrated into everyday workflows. Once you’ve built or downloaded a shortcut like this, you can trigger it with Siri, place it on your Home Screen, or link it to the Action Button if you’re feeling fancy.
When creating a shortcut, there’s a new a new Use Model block that lets you rope AI into the workflow. In practice, this means you can do things like feed a text input into an AI model with a specific prompt – for instance, telling it “help me find a recipe using what I have left in my fridge.” That’s exactly how the Leftover Recipes shortcut works, as seen below. Check out the Get Started with Models shortcut to see how to plug all these new capabilities together.
You can choose between three different AI processing methods. On-Device is the fastest and most secure, since nothing leaves your phone. Cloud uses Apple’s Private Cloud Compute system, which promises strong privacy even when requests are processed on Apple’s servers. It can handle more complex responses, but might take a little longer to reply. And for the most advanced results, you can opt for a third-party model like ChatGPT, assuming you’ve set it up through the Extension option.
If you want to go custom, the Use Model block can be configured to say pretty much anything you like. But there’s more: Apple has added support for other intelligent tools within the Shortcuts editor. Tap Add Action and dive into the Apple Intelligence category, and you’ll find access to Visual Intelligence, Image Playground, and Writing Tools too. That means you can build shortcuts that, for example, generate an image from a prompt, summarize a document, or analyze the contents of a photo – all automatically, based on whatever inputs you define.
It’s all surprisingly flexible, and undeniably powerful in the right hands. But the catch is, it still requires you to build and run these workflows manually. Still, if you’re willing to tinker, these new intelligent actions offer a lot of potential. Just don’t expect the AI to read your mind – yet.