Apple will reportedly enable iPhone owners in the European Union (EU) to set another default virtual assistant app instead of its troubled Siri.
Mark Gurman and Drake Bennett wrote in a lengthy Bloomberg article focusing on the reasons Apple still hasn’t cracked artificial intelligence (AI) like its peers that this rumored capability will be available to iPhone, iPad and Mac owners in the EU.
If Apple makes this change, then EU residents will be able to replace Siri with a third-party assistant app supporting this functionality, like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. This couldn’t come sooner; iPhone owners hate Siri universally, and Apple is even rumored to detach the Siri brand from Apple Intelligence in its marketing.
Rumor: Apple will let EU iPhone owners ditch Siri for another virtual assistant via app defaults
“To meet expected European Union regulations, the company is now working on changing its operating systems so that, for the first time, users can switch from Siri as their default voice assistant to third-party options, according to a person with knowledge of the matter,” reads the piece.
“Barring a major leap with Apple’s products, many users may make that switch. In addition to products from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Alphabet, others from innovative startups like DeepSeek continue to crop up.”
Apple’s services chief Eddy Cue said recently that the iPhone maker might add support to Safari for AI search tools from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity. While Apple doesn’t foresee AI search tools replace Google as the default search engine in Safari, the comment is the clearest sign yet how AI upstarts are challenging Google’s search dominance.
Apple finally brings app defaults
Apple has already made a similar concession to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act by introducing a dedicated Default Apps section within Settings > Apps for all iPhone owners, not just in the EU but worldwide. This is where people can change the default iPhone apps used for email, messaging, calling, call filtering, web browsing, translation, typing, contactless transactions and passwords.
For EU iPhone owners, Apple provides additional app default categories not available elsewhere, including setting a default navigation app. A version of the Google Maps app offered on the EU App Store already supports this functionality.
In Germany, some customers can set PayPal as a default app for NFC iPhone payments, replacing the built-in Wallet app, according to the German-language site iPhone Ticker. PayPal will expand this feature to other EU countries soon.
Third-party apps must explicitly support the ability to be set as a default app in order to be offered through this menu. A few apps currently offer this advantage, including Meta’s WhatsApp which you can set as your default messaging and calling app instead of the built-in Phone app.