iOS 27 Announcement: Initial Assessment

In early June, Apple announced iOS 27 (see more here). When new mobile operating systems are announced, we enroll test devices in the beta trials to monitor how customer texting traffic is likely to be affected. 

As of the latest iOS 27 beta, the Unknown Sender Inbox remains off by default, and the Spam folder is on by default. This is the same behavior as iOS 26. However, in our testing, we have observed some new behaviors.

As a reminder, these features and observations are subject to change as Apple continues to release new versions of iOS 27. We will continue to update this doc as we learn more.

Key Observations

• If the user does not have the Unknown Sender Inbox toggled on, images sent from an unknown number appear as a blurred square with text over top that reads “this sender is not in your contact list.” The recipient can view the image by clicking on it:

• We’ve observed that in some cases images and gifs appear as a file in the text thread, instead of showing the image directly. Recipients can click the file and it will open fullscreen in the Messages app. This behavior is new and we’re escalating it with our partners to learn if this behavior is intentional and we should expect it to remain when iOS 27 launches this fall.

• Based on Apple’s announcement about iOS 27 we expected to see one-tap follow-up action suggestions directly beneath received messages. For example, a one-tap suggestion to add an event mentioned in a message to your calendar appears when the message is received from a phone number saved in the phone’s contacts. We will continue to monitor for any updates to iOS 27 that might increase the likelihood these follow-up action suggestions will appear. 

• In the iOS 27 Messages app, a prompt now appears above the keyboard encouraging users to “Write with Siri”. Clicking “Write with Siri” opens Siri at the top of the display. 

Recommended Best Practices

These practices are recommendations and not requirements. They can help you run healthier programs in any context, but they are just recommendations. If we learn that specific practices are necessary to succeed following the iOS 27 launch, we’ll communicate that separately.

• Send to people who want to hear from your candidate or organization. The best recipe for good delivery and good ROI in any context is to use your own data and Switchboard’s many audience builder filters (and, if you choose, the Switchboard Collective) to maximize the percentage of your traffic that is sent to people who want to hear from you.
  

• Coordinate copy across senders. If multiple third parties are texting on behalf of the same candidate or organizations around the same time, vary the copy to avoid situations where a single recipient gets similar or identical messages from many different programs at once. 

Our Commitment

As always, we’ll keep an ear to the ground for updates that may impact your texting programs and the experience of your text recipients. Apple has already released two versions of the iOS 27 beta so we may see additional updates before the official iOS 27 launch this fall. Most iPhone users do not upgrade to new operating systems immediately, leaving us plenty of time to experiment and adjust recommendations based on observations.