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How to Keep an App Out of Siri AI on iPhone

iOS 27.2 added Excluded Apps: one list that keeps an app away from Siri, Search and suggestions. What it turns off, what you lose, and how to set it up.

Siri Calendar Notes Private app Excluded

Siri AI can read across your apps to answer questions about your messages, emails, photos and more. Apple calls it “personal context understanding.” That’s useful, but you may not want it reaching into every app, like a private chat app or a journal.

iOS 27.2, released October 26, added one setting for this. Excluded Apps lets you choose which apps “Siri, Search, and suggestions can access, all from one setting.” Before, it took several switches per app.

Checked against Apple’s iOS 27 release notes, iPhone User Guide (iOS 27), Siri privacy page and “How to get Siri AI” page, plus EFF’s October 28 write-up, November 14, 2026 (iOS 27.2.1).

The basics, in four lines

  • Where: Settings → Siri → Excluded Apps. Needs iOS 27.2 or later.
  • Add apps: tap Add Apps, select the apps, then tap the blue checkmark.
  • What it does: excluded apps “aren’t available to Siri, Search, or suggestions.” All apps are included by default.
  • The cost: Siri can’t read, act in, or answer questions about what’s on screen in an excluded app.

What Excluded Apps turns off

Apple’s Siri privacy page says adding an app to the list stops Siri from three things: using information the app shares to personalize Siri, taking actions in the app, and using its data to make suggestions in other apps. The app’s content also drops out of Search.

When an app is on Excluded Apps Siri using its data Off Siri actions in the app Off Its content in Search Off Siri suggestions Off Onscreen awareness while the app is open Off
What changes for an app on the list. The app itself is still on your iPhone.

This matters because of where Siri AI does its work. Apple says a Siri AI request “may be processed on your device or sent to Private Cloud Compute,” Apple’s server system, which it says doesn’t store your data or make it accessible to Apple. Apple says those requests can draw on “information from apps on your device.” Excluded Apps is how you choose which apps that includes.

How to set it up

  1. Update first: Settings → General → Software Update. The current version is iOS 27.2.1.
  2. Go to Settings → Siri → Excluded Apps.
  3. Tap Add Apps, select one or more apps, then tap the blue checkmark.

To undo it: on the same screen, tap Edit, tap the red minus icon next to the app, tap Delete, then tap the blue checkmark.

Which apps? That depends on what you’d never want surfaced in a Siri answer or a suggestion. Good candidates are a private messaging app, a journal, or a health or finance app.

What you give up

Some Siri features stop working, and as the EFF put it, that shows the setting is effective. The EFF found that excluding Messages means Siri AI can no longer read or reply to your messages. Onscreen awareness, where you ask Siri about what you’re looking at, also stops working inside any excluded app.

If you only want fewer suggestions from an app, there’s a lighter option. Go to Settings → Siri → Suggestions, tap the app, and turn off individual options, such as Show in App for Messages.

Good to know

  • Siri AI is still in beta. Apple lists it for iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 and later, iPhone Duo and iPhone Air, and it isn’t available on iPhone in the EU or for users under 13.
  • It covers Siri, Search and suggestions only. An app’s own access to your location, photos or contacts is set separately, in Settings → Privacy & Security.

New to all this? Start with the Basics.

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