IPadOS 27 Brings Visual Intelligence to iPad, But Only M-Series Models

Published by Carl Sanson on June 17, 2026June 17, 2026

What You Need to Know

Visual Intelligence now available on iPad, enabling contextual information through screenshots and Apple Pencil circles.
Siri AI indexes handwritten notes, summarizes text, and generates content systemwide across any app.
AI features require M-series processor or A17 Pro chip; unavailable in EU and China at launch.
Safari auto-groups tabs and gains AI-powered extension builder requiring no coding knowledge.

Visual Intelligence arriving on iPad is the quiet headline buried inside iPadOS 27’s feature list. Previously confined to iPhone, the capability now lets iPad users take a screenshot, circle something with a finger or Apple Pencil, and get contextual information back, whether that’s identifying a plant, an animal, or the nutritional content of food. The Apple Pencil integration makes this feel more natural on a large screen than it ever did on a phone.

The Siri overhaul runs deeper than the headline features suggest. Siri AI can now index handwritten Apple Pencil notes, making years of handwritten content searchable for the first time. It can also summarize, rewrite, check grammar, and generate new text across any app through a systemwide Write with Siri feature. A new Image Playground app powers image generation in any style, including photorealistic, and feeds directly into the Image Wand tool inside Notes, where a rough sketch can become a finished visual in seconds.

What older iPads actually get

The AI features carry a hard chip requirement: an M-series processor or the A17 Pro found in the iPad mini. Siri AI and Apple Intelligence won’t reach EU users or China at launch either. There’s a real gap forming between supported and unsupported devices, though older iPads do get the performance improvements, faster browsing, quicker AirDrop, faster app launches, and faster multitasking, without any of the AI capabilities.

Safari now groups tabs automatically and gains an AI-powered extension builder that requires no coding, which mirrors the Shortcuts app’s new ability to generate automations from plain-language descriptions. That Shortcuts feature has an obvious use case on iPad: describing in a sentence how you want windowing to behave when a keyboard is attached versus when it isn’t, then getting a working shortcut within a minute.

Apple also added a Liquid Glass opacity slider and made readability improvements to the interface, and iPhone apps running on iPad can now be resized. Whether Siri AI’s advanced tier eventually carries a cost remains a separate question, but for now the baseline features ship with the OS. The gap between what compatible and older iPads receive in iPadOS 27 is wider than any recent update has drawn it.

Source: iPadOS 27 Hands-On: Everything New for iPad (macrumors.com)