From a sentence to a finished action
Four steps, and there is no magic in any of them. This is what happens between you opening your mouth and the event being in your calendar.
The four steps
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You tell it what you want
By voice or in writing, in your own language and in a single sentence. The dictation is recognised on the iPhone itself: what leaves the phone is the text, never the audio.
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It reads the sentence and picks the tools
The model gets your sentence, what Nia remembers about you, the time, the rough location and the catalogue of 63 tools. It decides which ones are needed and with what arguments.
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The tools run on your phone
Calendar, Reminders, Photos, Maps, HomeKit and Health are touched with the iOS frameworks, on the device. The server has access to none of them.
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You see a card with what happened
Not a paragraph: a card with the real result, its badge saying who finished the action, and a button to undo it when it can be undone.
What runs on your iPhone and what on the server
The line sits where it has to sit: what needs your raw data stays on the phone; what needs a big model lives on the server, and gets text.
On the iPhone
- Dictation and the wake word
- Reading a receipt and transcribing a meeting
- Translating a text
- The masks in Nia Studio
- Your address book
- Calendar, Reminders, Photos, Health, HomeKit
On the server
- The model that understands the sentence
- Google search and reading links
- Generating images and video
- Semantic memory and your documents
- The jobs that run on their own
Gemini, with four more things inside the same turn
It is not just a model answering. Every turn carries tools that widen what it can know.
Google search
For what happened today, or for a fact Nia cannot know on its own. The answer shows the sources.
Link reader
It reads the page you paste in. Links it could not open are named to it before it answers, and it is forbidden to describe a page it did not read.
Your documents
It answers citing the file and the page. It goes in a separate call because the API will not search Google and your documents at the same time.
Code execution
For sums and charts: it works the number out for real instead of guessing the result in the text.
Nia does not say it has done something it has not done
A WhatsApp is not "sent"
It is ready to send, and the card says it in those words. The model gets the real state and is forbidden to phrase it any other way.
A Shortcut is not "created"
It is written and waiting for you to press "Add" on the Apple sheet. Until you press it, the shortcut does not exist, and the card warns you above the button.
A Spotify song is not "playing"
Nia resolves the exact track and opens Spotify on it. The result says which app it opened, never that it is playing.
A filter it could not apply gets said out loud
MapKit exposes neither opening hours nor ratings, so Nia gives you the places and tells you which filter it could not apply, instead of making up that they are open.
How it works underneath
Which AI model does Nia use?
Gemini, on the server, which is the only place in the system that talks to the model: there is no key inside the app. The turn also carries Google search for what happened today, reading of the links you paste, code execution for sums and charts, and search across your own documents.
Does Nia work offline?
The parts that run on the iPhone do: dictation, the wake word, translating a text and reading a receipt. The model lives on the server, so understanding a request needs a connection.
Can I undo what Nia does?
Almost all of it. The result card carries an undo button when the action can be undone: an event created, a reminder, an alarm, a routine, something you have just saved. When it cannot, as with an email already sent or a photo deleted, the card does not offer a button that would be lying.
Shall we begin?
Download Nia, tell it the first thing and see what happens. The free plan asks for no card.
Free to start. Requires iOS 18. In English and Spanish.