When my wife borrowed my iPhone to take a photo recently, she inadvertently held the Sleep/Wake button, triggering an edge-to-edge rainbow effect. "What's that?" she asked.
It's the new look that appears when summoning Siri. Although the effect was introduced in iOS 18, she has an older iPhone model and only sees the previous glowing orb when activating the virtual assistant.
It sounds like a silly thing to prioritize, but Siri's rainbow shimmer isn't just a cosmetic makeover. As part of Apple Intelligence features such as notification summaries, Genmoji and the Clean Up tool in Photos, Siri also got new features.
If the familiar sphere at the bottom of the screen appears, you may need some assistance getting Siri's glow-up to activate. If you recently upgraded to iOS 26, here's what to do.
The new design of Siri is a glowing border that distorts everything briefly.
Screenshots by Jeff Carlson/CNETWatch this: How to Get Siri's Glow-up on Your iPhone
Your iPhone might not be able to run Apple Intelligence
You may need a new phone to get Apple Intelligence to work properly. More than likely, you'll just need to do a quick software update.
The latest system update is for everyone with an iPhone 11 or later. Because much of the AI computation is done on the device, only a handful of models can currently run the new technologies:
- iPhone 15 Pro
- iPhone 15 Pro Max
- iPhone 16
- iPhone 16 Plus
- iPhone 16E
- iPhone 16 Pro
- iPhone 16 Pro Max
- iPhone 17
- iPhone 17 Pro
- iPhone 17 Pro Max
- iPhone Air
Apple Intelligence will also run on Macs and iPads with M-series processors, as well as the latest iPad Mini (which is powered by the A17 Pro chip).
If you have any of those models, you'll see the shimmering new look when you invoke Siri. On the Mac, the Siri search field produces the same effect as the entire screen edges. If you have a different model, you'll see the same Siri orb.
Siri under iOS 18 looks the same as it did in iOS 17 for many people.
Screenshot by Jeff Carlson/CNETYou may need to re-enable Apple Intelligence
After the first Apple Intelligence features arrived in iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 and MacOS Sequoia 15.1, they weren't automatically turned on. You had to sign up and wait for a few hours or days to get access.
The latest updates (iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and MacOS Tahoe 26) now automatically enable Apple Intelligence. Even if you just jumped from an earlier iOS to 26, Apple Intelligence should be on, and the new Siri interface should appear.
However, if you had Apple Intelligence on your device at some point but turned it off, the latest updates don't flip the switch to re-enable it. Go to Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri and make sure the Apple Intelligence toggle is turned on.
Check your Siri language settings
Currently, Apple Intelligence is not available worldwide and uses only English language models. In Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri, make sure Language is set to one of the following:
- English
- French
- German
- Italian
- Portuguese (Brazil)
- Spanish
- Chinese (Simplified)
- Japanese
- Korean
Additionally, if you switched the Language setting to something else -- talking to Siri in another language can be more fun than Duolingo -- selecting one of the languages above might not automatically re-enable the new Siri. But there's an easy fix: In Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri, turn Apple Intelligence off and back on again. Then restart the iPhone. That re-downloads the necessary language model.
For more on what's new related to iOS 26, here's the right way to back up your iPhone before you install iOS 26 and the settings you want to change first in iOS 26. And don't miss my six favorite Apple Intelligence features.
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See all photosWatch this: Apple Redesigns Siri With AI and Glowing Borders
