A Siri alternative that does not claim to replace it entirely

Siri is the system assistant and it wins at something no app can match: it listens with the iPhone locked and the app closed, because it runs on a coprocessor no third party app can reach. With Siri AI, which arrived with iOS 27, it also understands long sentences, chains actions and searches the web, for now in beta, in six languages, on iPhone 15 Pro or later and outside the European Union. Nia does that in 19 languages, on any iPhone with iOS 18 and in the EU too, and on Plus and Pro it remembers what you tell it and answers about your PDFs. And when it cannot do something, it says so.

Not entirely, and that is on purpose. Siri is still the way in when the phone is locked: you say "Hey Siri, ask Nia", Siri asks what you want to know and reads you Nia's answer without opening the app. Nia also lives in the widget, in Control Centre and on the Action button. What Nia is for is what happens after the sentence, not the sentence.

ChatGPT and Gemini are AI chats: they talk very well, but from their apps they do not create events in the iPhone's Calendar or set system reminders or alarms. Nia turns what you say into actions in those apps, and it runs on Google's Gemini models. The full comparison is in Siri, ChatGPT, Gemini and Nia, row by row, and one at a time in Nia vs ChatGPT and Nia vs Gemini.

No. The wake word "Hey Nia" is switched on by hand in Settings, with its battery warning, and it only works with the app open or with background audio mode on. With the app closed, Nia does not listen, and that is not a fault: iOS does not allow it to any app other than Siri. While it is listening, the orange microphone indicator is on, as it should be.

When your iPhone supports your language offline, dictation stays on the phone; when it does not, Apple transcribes it on its servers, as with keyboard dictation. The wake word is only ever detected on the iPhone. Of what you say to Nia, the audio does not reach its server: the text does, so the model can understand it. There are three cases in which audio does leave the phone. Group radio: when you turn it on and hold to speak, the voice notice goes through the server to reach the people in that group who turned their listening on; it lives in memory for about thirty seconds, and if someone reports it, it is kept for thirty days. Telling apart the voices in a meeting you record: that audio goes through Nia's server to the Google model that works out who is speaking. And an audio file you attach in the chat: it travels with your message to the model, so it can listen to it. Reading a receipt, translating text, Nia Studio masks and your location also stay on the phone, with location rounded to a kilometre before it leaves.

In 19: Spanish, Catalan, English, French, Italian, German, Brazilian and European Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Thai, Korean, Hindi and Arabic, plus the variants for Mexico, the UK, Australia and Canada. The screens follow your iPhone's language, and Nia answers in the language you speak to it, with a native voice. In automatic mode it listens for your iPhone's first two languages at once, so you can switch language halfway through a conversation. You can also fix one.

A voice notice is only sent when you turn radio on and hold to speak. There are no public channels and nobody can turn listening on for you. A notice lives in memory for about thirty seconds so it can reach people who chose to listen. If someone reports it, it is kept for thirty days so it can be reviewed. There is no end to end encryption and Nia does not identify anyone by their voice.

Yes, in six places: the Home Screen widget (the medium one shows your next event), the Control Center control and the Action button, Siri and Shortcuts, the Live Activities in the Dynamic Island, Spotlight search and the share sheet in Photos.