If you’re a habitual user of Apple’s first-party Notes app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, then this latest rumor is for you. As per The Information, Notes is reportedly set to gain some supercharged functionality in its next release as part of iOS 26.4. Specifically, new artifical intelligence-powered smarts are finally rumored to be arriving, with cross-app contextual awareness leading the charge.
According to information obtained by the tech outlet, iOS 26.4 will mark the release of the long-awaited Siri digital voice assistant refresh we’ve been holding our breathes for — at least in its initial incarnation. Previously confirmed to be powered under-the-hood by Google Gemini for access to large language models (LLMs), this next-generation Siri is expected to tie into Apple’s first-party services, with Notes being a possible ground-zero for this new approach to AI.
“Siri will also be able to handle other types of tasks, such as creating a Notes document with a cooking recipe or information about the top causes of drug addiction, for instance,” says The Information.
In other words, the Notes app on your iPhone might soon be smart enough to gather information from, say, Mail or Safari, and distill relevant details within a new or existing note entry. For example, while visiting your local movie theater’s website in Safariyou could ask the assistant to make a note of specific films, their length, and their associated screening times right inside of Notes proper.
Apple Intelligence with a hint of Google Gemini
Apple is officially deferring to Google for all things AI
Back on January 12, Google and Apple made a joint statement confirming the adoption of the former’s AI technology within the latter’s AI framework. The news broke after months of scrutiny surrounding Apple Intelligence and Siri lacking competitiveness in a world increasingly dominated by Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI platforms.
Apple first debuted its Apple Intelligence AI platform at the WWDC24 software conference in June 2024, where it hyped up major upgrades to Siri’s ability to understand context across different applications. The next several months saw the rollout of various smaller-scale AI features like Writing Tools and Genmojiacross Apple’s product portfolio, but all was silent on the Siri side of things.
Apple’s internal AI woes have since become a highly publicized affairand, with its confirmed adoption of Gemini for LLM duty on the iPhone, it looks as though the Cupertino, California-based tech giant has (at least temporarily) thrown in the towel when it comes to the AI wars.
If this latest Apple Notes upgrade rumor is to be believed, then we might not be far off from seeing the early fruits of this new all-new partnership between Google and Apple. iOS 26.3 is currently in beta testing, with a stable release likely targeting sometime later this month. Based on Apple’s previous software update cadence, we can likely expect to see iOS 26.4 land in late March or early April of this year.
