How Visual Intelligence in iPadOS 27 and macOS 27 Turns Your Screen into a Smart Surface

Your screens are no longer just static pixels. With the release of iPadOS 27 and macOS 27, Apple has completely rethought how you interact with what you see. The new Visual Intelligence features turn any image, webpage, or document into actionable data. Let's look at how this changes your daily workflow.

Turn screenshots into calendar events and contacts

We all know the pain of manually typing dates from a concert schedule into a calendar. Visual Intelligence completely removes this friction. When you capture your screen, the system reads the text and offers instant actions.

Here's how to use it on your Mac

1. Press Shift + Command + 6 on your keyboard.
2. Your cursor will turn into crosshairs. Drag to select an area containing dates or contact info.
3. A menu appears next to your selection. Click Add to Calendar or Add to Contacts.

This is equally powerful on the iPad. Take a standard screenshot of a webpage showing multiple dates. Tap the Add to Calendar button at the bottom of the screen. You can instantly add every single event from that list to your calendar with one tap. You will also see options to Read Aloud or Summarize the text.

Circle to search with Apple Pencil

Visual Intelligence goes beyond text. It can identify landmarks, products, and general knowledge right from your iPad screen. You no longer need to crop an image and upload it to a search engine.

Give it a spin

1. Take a screenshot of a photo or video on your iPad.
2. Use your Apple Pencil to draw a circle around the subject you want to identify.
3. Tap the reverse image search option to see results from Google, Amazon, or standard lookup.

Pro tip: This works perfectly for shopping. If you see an interesting product in a video, circle it to pull up Amazon results directly over your current app.

Ask Siri about what you see

Siri on macOS 27 is now deeply integrated with Visual Intelligence. You can ask complex questions about the specific files you have downloaded or the images you are currently viewing. It processes the context privately and securely right on your device.

How it works

1. Select a downloaded PDF document in your Finder.
2. Open Siri and ask a specific question. For example, "Give me a gist of the case against OpenAI."
3. Siri will read the selected PDF and provide a formatted summary panel.

You can even select multiple image files at once. Highlight a batch of screenshots and ask Siri, "Do any of these look like the Final Cut Pro UI?" Siri analyzes the visual content of all the images and tells you exactly which ones match your query.

A few more iPad and Mac upgrades

Beyond Visual Intelligence, these updates pack a few extra productivity boosts.

• Faster file transfers: The Files app on iPad is rebuilt to match the Mac Finder. Navigating folders and moving files to external Thunderbolt drives is noticeably faster.
• One-tap pasting: When you open a text field like a message on your iPad, a small Paste from Recent button appears above your keyboard. This lets you paste your last copied item instantly.
• Custom Safari extensions: Use the Describe Extension option in Safari on your Mac to build custom tools. You can tell it to extract all images from a webpage and download them straight to a local folder.

Over to you

Visual Intelligence completely bridges the gap between seeing something on your screen and actually doing something with it. Whether you are grabbing concert dates on your iPad or analyzing legal PDFs on your Mac, these tools save you countless steps. Update your devices, grab your Apple Pencil, and start exploring.