The Future of iOS Apps
Let's explore how users will interact with apps in the future and how we can prepare today.
It all started with $0.99, but the transition from paid upfront to subscriptions isn't the only major change the app ecosystem has went through.
In my opinion, the first major change was the addition of WidgetKit. While in the first versions, widgets didn't support any interactivity and were limited to the user's home screen, having widgets meant that certain interactions were moved away from the in-app-experience to the home screen. Over the years, widgets have been expanded to support tiny animations and interactive buttons through the AppIntents framework. They can also appear on the lock screen, on Apple Watch, and even inside the Control Center.
We also got Live Activities - yet another way to surface your app's content in the OS. And another reason for your users to not open your app. Now the question is where this is headed. And to me, the answer is clear:
Siri 2.0 and the AppIntents framework
With a revamped Siri, and people getting used to asking Chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini instead of opening a search engine and finding the result themselves it becomes quite clear what the future of iOS apps might look like.
I believe that apps will more or less be transformed into databases. They collect data through some way (e.g. messages sent to you, health data collected by peripherals, weather forecasts from your server), and allow users to view & interact with that data. In reality, this is already the case for most apps - they are just an abstraction on CRUD. But with Siri 2.0, this cycle might be broken. Sending messages might not take place inside your app. Instead, people might start doing that through Siri using their voice. And the same is probably true for reading your app's data. That's just a quick Siri query away.
And it makes sense: this is the easier and faster way to interact with the app. Why do audiobooks exist? Because reading is slow. Now you might say that there probably also is some delay in between your user's voice input and Siri saying the result from within your app. You're right about that. But opening an app, getting overwhelmed by tons of content (e.g. other unread messages or new posts), and navigating to a specific screen also takes time. More than time, it costs mental resources.
Are apps and UI dead then?
This could be a first logical conclusion, but I don't think so - at least for now. There's still a place for beautifully crafted interfaces and interactions. In fact, our current "vibecoded apps-floaded App Store" era is the best time ever to publish a well polished and thought-through app. As always, quality matters. And part of the quality of apps will soon be how well they integrate with AI chatbots like Siri 2.0.
My advice
Go all in on quality, while making sure all your app's core functionality (creating, editing, reading, and deleting content) is available to Siri. Today, this is done through AppIntents and you can already prepare your apps. Don't sleep on it.