Among the news from this week's WWDC is that Apple is opening up Siri and iMessage apps to third party developers, giving new opportunities for adding features to your iOS apps.

The ability to include Siri voice functionality into your applications will mean you'll be able to support features that your users access by saying "Hey Siri". The new features go beyond the current third-party Siri integrations from big name players such as Twitter and Yelp.

Apple Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, said at WWDC that an example of how the new options could be used would be sending a WeChat to say you’ll be five minutes late. He said that:

"In iOS 10 we have an intense API, and Siri is going to be able to do so much more.“

Other examples given of what you'll be able to do include using Siri to call app services such as WhatsApp; booking taxis with Uber, managing workouts in Runtastic or Runkeeper; and starting calls using Skype and Viber.

The new ability to work with iMessage apps will mean you can create app extensions that provide a way for your users to interact with your app directly within Messages. The sort of thing this enables includes creating and sharing content, adding stickers, and making payments, without leaving Messages.

The way it works is that users open up an app drawer from within the Messages app. The example given at WWDC was that of opening up the food-delivery app DoorDash from inside iMessage, and collaborating with friends to create a joint order. Apple is to an extent playing catch-up in this area, as Facebook has already allowed developers to create bots for Facebook Messenger, and Google is working on giving developers access to Allo, its messaging service.

More Information

IMessage Developer Page

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