iOS 27 Developer Beta 2 includes a new per-automation on/off toggle in the Shortcuts app, and beta testers were quick to highlight it as a useful quality-of-life improvement. The toggle appears directly in the Automations list, allowing you to disable or re-enable an automation without opening it and editing its settings.
The addition is particularly useful because iOS 27 has fundamentally changed how automations work. Automations are no longer a separate category in Shortcuts. Instead, they are now standard shortcuts with triggers added as the first action, allowing a single shortcut to have multiple triggers if you want it to run under different conditions.
Existing automations are automatically converted during the upgrade process, which can make large Shortcuts libraries more difficult to navigate until users become familiar with the new structure.
iCloud sync is the big payoff
The architectural shift comes with a genuine benefit the old system never offered: automations now sync across devices via iCloud. Because an automation is a shortcut with triggers attached, it travels with your shortcut library.
When one of these automation-shortcuts syncs to another device, say, alongside your watchOS 27 Beta 2 setup, it defaults to disabled on arrival, which is sensible behavior given that a trigger set up for one device may not make sense on another. That default-off behavior also makes the new on/off toggle more important day-to-day, since managing which automations are active on which device is now a routine task rather than an edge case.
Some users have found that toggling an automation off and back on from the Automations list can fix broken automations in the current beta, which is useful to know given how unstable automations are right now. Specific trigger types are not working in Beta 2: automations set to fire on app open or app close are broken, and sunset and sunrise automations remain non-functional.
One user reported that all their shortcuts fired correctly one night, then failed completely the following morning, the kind of unpredictability you also see with AirPods disconnecting on iOS 27 beta, but still worth knowing before installing.
Apple Intelligence builds shortcuts from plain language
Beyond the automation architecture changes, iOS 27 introduces a “Describe a Shortcut” feature for iPhone 15 Pro and newer devices. Users describe what they want a shortcut to do in plain language, and Apple Intelligence assembles it automatically. Apple demonstrated an example at WWDC 2026 where a user described a shortcut that turns on porch lights at night when a food delivery notification arrives, and the system built the workflow without any manual configuration.
Previously, creating that kind of multi-step automation required working through Shortcuts step by step, which kept the feature largely out of reach for casual users. The same Siri AI push is also landing on other platforms, tvOS 27 Beta 2 confirms Siri AI for Apple TV and HomePod, and Apple has already patched a Siri AI waitlist bypass in macOS 27 Beta 2.
Beta 2 also brings a few other visible changes. The “Write with Siri” suggestion now appears on the iPhone and iPad software keyboard, replacing Writing Tools, joining features like Ask Siri in the Photos app that also debuted in Beta 2. Early testers report that Siri AI response performance feels faster in this build.
iOS 27 supports iPhone 11 and later, though Apple Intelligence features like “Describe a Shortcut” require Apple Intelligence-compatible hardware. The update also brings broader system improvements, including accessibility features like AI subtitles and smarter VoiceOver. A public beta is expected in July 2026, with the final release scheduled for September 2026.
