What’s new in app intents?

What’s New in App Intents

App Intents have received several significant updates and enhancements this year. Here are the key highlights:

1. Expanded Functionality:

   • Previously, app intents were meant to be the most habitual tasks in your app that could be useful outside of your app. In iOS 18, this guidance has changed to go beyond common functionality. Now, anything your app does should be an app intent (Design App Intents for system experiences).

2. Enhanced Siri Integration:

   • Siri can now invoke any item from your app's menus, making it more flexible and intelligent. This includes enhanced conversational capabilities, like responding correctly even if you stumble over your words and understanding references to earlier parts of a conversation (Platforms State of the Union).

3. Spotlight Integration:

   • New APIs allow you to index your app entities in Spotlight, bringing powerful semantic search to app intents. This makes it easier for users to find and interact with your app's features directly from Spotlight (What’s new in App Intents).

4. Universal Links:

   • App intents now support universal links, allowing the device to take users directly to where they need to be in your app (What’s new in App Intents).

5. Developer Experience Improvements:

   • There are several improvements to make it easier for developers to work with app intents, including better tools and documentation (What’s new in App Intents).

6. Guidance on Structuring App Intents:

   • Updated guidance on how to structure your app intents to be flexible and readable across many configurations and use cases. This includes tips on parameter types and summaries to ensure clarity and usability (Design App Intents for system experiences).

For a comprehensive overview, you can watch the session What’s new in App Intents.