Apple redesigns photo editor in iOS 27: three AI features to rival Android

Apple is preparing a major redesign of the built-in photo editor in iOS 27 and macOS 27, betting on artificial intelligence to catch up to Android in areas where iPhone has long lagged behind.

What's Changing in the Editor

The company is completely rethinking the editing tools built into the Photos app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. According to Bloomberg, the key directions are frame expansion, image quality improvement, and reframing. Three functions with telling English names: extend, enhance, reframe.

Together, they cover an area where Android flagship devices have long outpaced iPhone. Until now, Apple's built-in editor offered a standard set of features without surprises: cropping, brightness, contrast, saturation, filters. Generative capabilities — object removal, frame extension, composition changes without cropping — were available only through third-party apps like Lightroom, Snapseed, or Facetune.

Apple wants to bring this level of editing to the standard gallery — without additional downloads and paid subscriptions.

What is planned in the updated editor:

• Extend — frame expansion: AI extends the image boundaries beyond the original
• Enhance — quality improvement: work with sharpness, light, white balance, and noise
• Reframe — reframing: composition change without loss of details
• Deep integration into the standard Photos app on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS

Why Now

Android manufacturers put AI editing at the center of their marketing several years ago. Google Pixel offers Magic Eraser, Photo Unblur, and Best Take starting with the sixth generation. Samsung Galaxy integrated Generative Edit and object removal mode directly into the standard gallery. Chinese manufacturers — Xiaomi, Honor, Vivo — are actively expanding AI features in native camera apps.

Apple traditionally relied on hardware superiority: larger sensors, improved optics, night mode, Photonic Engine processor. Software editing tools developed more slowly than competitors'.

As a result, in independent comparisons, users and journalists increasingly noted that built-in processing "out of the box" on Android turned out to be more convenient — especially for those who actively shoot and edit photos before publishing to social media.

Apple Intelligence, launched in 2025, covered work with text, notifications, mail, and Siri. Photos are the next logical frontier: it's the first thing a user opens when picking up the phone. This is where Apple needs to show that AI is integrated organically, not as an add-on.

When to Expect and Which Devices

iOS 27 and macOS 27 are traditionally announced at WWDC in June and released publicly in September. If Bloomberg's information is confirmed, the new AI tools for photos will appear in this fall release cycle.

Generative features will likely be limited to devices with A17 Pro series chips and newer — exactly the scheme Apple already uses for some Apple Intelligence features.

Users of iPhone 14 and earlier models will get an updated editor interface, but without generative capabilities. For those who haven't updated in the last two to three years, this will be an additional incentive to upgrade in the fall.

One important note: if Apple uses the same architecture as in other Apple Intelligence features, image processing will happen directly on the device. This means photos don't need to be sent to the cloud — an important argument for users who value privacy.

What This Means

Apple is tackling one of the last segments where Android has consistently outpaced iPhone — intelligent photo editing directly in the standard gallery. If the implementation turns out to be more convenient than Google's or Samsung's, this will become one of the key arguments when buying a new iPhone in fall 2026.