How does an app intent communicate with my app?
Asked on 06/12/2025
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App Intents communicate with your app by acting as a bridge between system features and your app's core functionalities. When a user interacts with a system feature like Siri, Spotlight, or Shortcuts, the system sends a message to your app to perform a specific action. Your app then executes the action and sends a response back to the system, indicating the result of the action. This communication is managed by the App Intents framework, allowing you to focus on implementing the behavior of your app's features without worrying about the underlying communication details.
For example, if a user asks Siri to perform an action in your app, Siri will send a message to your app to execute that action. Your app will then perform the action and send a confirmation back to Siri. This process is seamless and allows your app's features to be accessible across various system interfaces.
To learn more about how App Intents work, you can refer to the session Bring your app’s core features to users with App Intents (06:27).
Bring your app’s core features to users with App Intents
Learn the principles of the App Intents framework, like intents, entities, and queries, and how you can harness them to expose your app’s most important functionality right where people need it most. Find out how to build deep integration between your app and the many system features built on top of App Intents, including Siri, controls and widgets, Apple Pencil, Shortcuts, the Action button, and more. Get tips on how to build your App Intents integrations efficiently to create the best experiences in every surface while still sharing code and core functionality.
Get to know App Intents
Learn about the App Intents framework and its increasingly critical role within Apple’s developer platforms. We’ll take you through a ground-up introduction of the core concepts: intents, entities, queries, and much more. You’ll learn how these pieces fit together and let you integrate your app through Apple’s devices, from software features like Spotlight and Shortcuts to hardware features like the Action button. We’ll also walk through how App Intents is your app’s gateway to integrating with Apple Intelligence going forward.
Design App Intents for system experiences
App Intents power system experiences in controls, Spotlight, Siri, and more. Find out how to identify the functionality that’s best for App Intents, and how to use parameters to make these intents flexible. Learn how to use App Intents to allow people to take action outside your app, and see examples of when to navigate into your app to show contextual information.