Apple has announced that it is depreciating a number of Siri features for developers with the release of iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, watchOS 8, and tvOS 15. These deprecated SiriKit intent domains will mean that Siri will not be able to perform the actions when asked to do so. Some of these deprecated Siri intents will impact CarPlay, Lists and Notes, Payments, Photos, Ride Booking, and more.
Siri to lose some of its intelligence with iOS 15
Apple has told developers that they do not remove the API calls from their apps but they will receive compile-time warnings.
Make plans to update any promotional activities that highlight the functionality provided by these APIs in your app. Please note that the symbols will remain in the SDK, so you don’t need to remove the API calls from your app. However, you’ll receive compile-time warnings alerting you to the deprecation going forward.
Instead of opening up SiriKit further in this operating system update, Apple has gone a few steps back. The biggest impact of these changes is going to be on apps such as Ride Booking, Photos search, Lists and Notes, and Payments. There are a few popular third-party apps that allow users to create notes or lists using Siri which will not be able to support this feature moving forward.
Apple has not shared any reason as to why it is removing these Siri features for developers. If we had to guess, it might be because these SiriKit intents might not have seen sufficient use. However, this will discourage developers from even integrating Siri in the future as they might not know when Apple might pull the rug from under the SirKit intent they would be using.
Not all is bad here as developers have been using Siri Shortcuts which allow users to create their own custom actions. Most of the SiriKit intents that Apple is deprecating can be replicated with Siri Shortcuts, however, a bit of manual setup is required to do so. Siri Shortcuts also require using an exact phrase to get the action done, which was not the case with these SiriKit intents as they were much “smarter”.
