App Intents (iOS 26+)

Implement, review, and extend App Intents to expose app functionality to Siri, Shortcuts, Spotlight, widgets, Control Center, and Apple Intelligence.

Contents

• Triage Workflow
• AppIntent Protocol
• @Parameter
• AppEntity
• EntityQuery (4 Variants)
• AppEnum
• AppShortcutsProvider
• System Surface Integration
• iOS 26 Additions
• Common Mistakes
• Review Checklist
• References

Triage Workflow

Step 1: Choose the action, boundary, and surface

Start from 1-3 valuable actions people want outside the app, not from its screen hierarchy. Record one design row per action: user goal; inline result or app destination; shared domain operation; parameters and entity query; confirmation/authentication; target surface and protocol. Use one explicit runtime route for app handoff instead of scattering navigation side effects through intents.

Then choose the system feature and protocol that fit that action:

Surface	Protocol	Since
Siri / Shortcuts	AppIntent	iOS 16
Configurable widget	WidgetConfigurationIntent	iOS 17
Control Center	ControlConfigurationIntent	iOS 18
Spotlight search	IndexedEntity	iOS 18
Apple Intelligence	@AppIntent(schema:)	iOS 18
Interactive snippets	SnippetIntent	iOS 26
Visual Intelligence	IntentValueQuery	iOS 26

Step 2: Define the data model

• Prefer AppEntity shadow models for app data exposed to the system.
• Create AppEnum types for fixed parameter choices.
• Choose the right EntityQuery variant for resolution.
• Mark searchable entities with IndexedEntity and indexingKey metadata.

Step 3: Implement the intent