These Apple Features Aren't Available in the EU

Siri AI runs in the EU on the Mac and Vision Pro – iPhone and iPad miss out, and the Apple Watch along with them. The latest case follows a pattern that began in 2024 with iPhone Mirroring and has been adding new features year after year ever since. Anyone using an Apple device in Germany has to do without features the rest of the world takes for granted – while a few kilometers away in Switzerland, everything works.

With iOS 27, Apple unveiled an entirely new Siri at WWDC 2026 – and made clear in the same breath that it won't appear on iPhone and iPad in the EU for now. The dividing line runs precisely along the DMA designation of iOS and iPadOS as core platform services: Mac and Vision Pro get the new Siri in Europe too, the two most-used Apple devices do not – and because the Apple Watch draws its Siri AI from the paired iPhone, it is locked out along with them. Siri AI is therefore not an isolated case, but the largest entry so far on a list that has been growing steadily since WWDC 2024. Some features eventually arrived months late, others have been missing for two years with no timeline at all – and in parallel, features are emerging in the EU that exist nowhere else. This overview sorts out the current state: what's missing, what was added later, what Europe gets exclusively, and what reasons lie behind each.

All Known Feature Gaps at a Glance

Siri AI: The Latest and Largest Gap

The new Siri launches in the fall as a beta with iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and the rest of the generation 27 systems. Apple made the EU delay for iPhone and iPad official on the evening of the keynote: as long as the company sees no path to regulatory approval, Europe will miss out on the dedicated Siri app with conversation history, the expanded Visual Intelligence, the integrated Writing Tools and the Siri mode in the Camera app. The Apple Watch is affected too – not because watchOS falls under the DMA, but because Siri runs there via the paired iPhone: without Siri AI on the iPhone, the watch inherits the block automatically. At launch, the new Siri is therefore available in the EU only on the Mac and Vision Pro, since macOS and visionOS are not designated as gatekeeper platforms. Software chief Craig Federighi explained that Apple currently has no timeline for iPhone and iPad in the EU; the Commission rejected every solution Apple proposed to introduce the new Siri while simultaneously supporting other assistants. Specifically, Apple had proposed an intermediary called Trusted System Agent, through which third-party voice assistants could have safely accessed the same features as Siri AI, along with a plan to launch the new Siri immediately and roll out this solution over 18 months. The Commission rejected this – and made clear in turn that the decision against an EU launch rests with Apple alone, that the DMA does not prohibit any product launch, and that Apple had requested an 18-month exemption from interoperability obligations instead of a compliant solution. Developers in the EU are affected by the decision as well, since they can neither build nor test Siri AI features for their apps on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Incidentally, China too will initially be without the new Siri, where approval from local authorities is lacking – so Europe is not the only market in which regulation dictates Apple's timelines, but the only one in which one and the same assistant is available or blocked depending on the device.

Tap to Share: The Second iOS 27 Gap

With iOS 27, Apple is extending its Tap to Pay on iPhone with Tap to Share: merchants connect their iPhone to a customer's device via an NFC tap and exchange data directly – contact details for a membership sign-up, a shipping address, the email address for the receipt, or passes for Apple Wallet, while the payment runs through Apple Pay in the same flow. It's intended for small shops and market stalls that operate without point-of-sale hardware. It requires an iPhone 12 or newer – and a location outside the European Economic Area: the feature is blocked not only in the EU, but also in Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Here, for once, Apple gives no reason, nor a timeline. What stands out, however, is the scope, since the block covers exactly the economic area in which Apple's regulatory obligations around NFC and interoperability apply.

iPhone Mirroring: Two Years of Waiting With No Timeline

iPhone Mirroring is the oldest and most symbolic gap. Since macOS Sequoia, the iPhone can be operated entirely from the Mac – notifications, apps, drag-and-drop of photos. The feature never appeared in the EU, not even with macOS Tahoe 26. Apple explained that its teams have so far found no secure way to open the feature to other manufacturers' devices without endangering all the data on users' iPhones. The background is the DMA's interoperability requirement: if Apple offered mirroring in the EU, competitors could demand the same access. That has already happened – according to a 2024 Apple white paper, Meta requested access to iPhone Mirroring, citing the DMA. To this day, Apple gives no timeline for an EU launch.

Maps Without Memory: Visited Places and Preferred Routes

With iOS 26, Apple introduced the Visited Places feature in the Maps app, which logs restaurants, shops or museums in encrypted form and makes them findable again later. It's available in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and Malaysia – but not anywhere in the EU. The block runs deeper than many would expect: even if you travel to Switzerland or the United States with an iPhone registered in the EU, the Maps app records nothing there, since what matters is the region of the Apple Account. According to Apple, the feature can only be enabled by those who permanently reside outside the EU. The same availability pattern applies to Preferred Routes with automatic commute and traffic alerts. Apple justifies its reticence by arguing that the DMA could require this location data to be made accessible to third-party apps as well – a risk the company is unwilling to take with highly sensitive location histories. The data is either stored only locally on the device or synced end-to-end encrypted via iCloud, so that Apple itself has no access to it. Apple's chief legal officer Kyle Andeer announced the gap back in mid-2025 at a workshop in Brussels.

The Resolved Cases: Apple Intelligence and Live Translation

That an EU gap doesn't have to be permanent is shown by two prominent examples. Apple Intelligence launched in October 2024 initially without the EU on iPhone and iPad; only with iOS 18.4 in late March 2025 – around half a year later and right in time for the start of German language support – did the AI suite arrive here too. By now it is a fixed part of the system and was expanded at WWDC 2026 with the next generation of AI features. It went similarly with Live Translation with AirPods: it launched in September 2025 with iOS 26 internationally, but initially left out the EU. Apple itself later attributed this to the considerable additional engineering work needed to meet the requirements of the Digital Markets Act – and delivered the feature in December 2025 with iOS 26.2, including German. Both cases show the same pattern: Apple holds new features back until a DMA-compliant implementation is ready, rather than not bringing them at all. With iPhone Mirroring and Siri AI, however, that point has not been reached even after years, or at launch, respectively.

Why Switzerland Gets It All – and the Geography of the Gaps

The sharpest illustration of the pattern comes from Switzerland. It lies in the middle of Europe, but is not an EU member and therefore does not fall under the Digital Markets Act – so Swiss users get exactly the features that are missing a few kilometers away in Germany or Austria. iPhone Mirroring, Visited Places and, at the time, Live Translation were usable in Switzerland from the start. Traveling to Switzerland with an iPhone registered in the EU does not unlock the features, however: what matters is the region of the Apple Account, not the current location.

A precise distinction between the terms is worthwhile here, since not every block covers the same territory. The DMA-related gaps such as iPhone Mirroring or Visited Places affect the 27 EU member states; non-EU countries in Europe such as Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Norway are left out. Tap to Share, by contrast, is blocked across the entire European Economic Area, including Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein – only Switzerland falls outside this too, since it belongs to neither the EU nor the EEA. "Not EU" is nonetheless no blanket guarantee: Apple publishes no feature-by-feature country list, and availability can vary depending on account region and device rollout.

Why the Features Are Missing: The Mechanism Behind It

The common denominator of almost all the gaps is the Digital Markets Act. It classifies iOS and iPadOS as core platform services of a gatekeeper and obliges Apple to open core functions to competitors – from notifications and pairing procedures to transmission protocols. To that end, the European Commission served Apple a concrete list of requirements with deadlines in March 2025. Apple's position: certain features cannot be opened without compromising users' security and privacy. The Commission counters that opening up strengthens competition and consumer choice, and emphasizes that Apple fights the application of the law at nearly every stage instead of delivering compliant solutions. As a result, Apple often chooses the path of omission for new features: what doesn't appear in the EU doesn't have to be opened up. How far this logic reaches was shown by the Wi-Fi sync between iPhone and Apple Watch: until now, the watch automatically took over all the Wi-Fi networks stored on the iPhone. The EU demanded that this feature also be opened to third-party products such as non-Apple smartwatches or Meta glasses by the end of 2025 – Apple refused on privacy grounds and instead switched off the automatic transfer in the EU with iOS 26.2. Since then, the Apple Watch here only connects automatically to a known network if the paired iPhone is nearby; otherwise the password has to be entered manually on the watch. Rather than putting third-party hardware on equal footing, Apple chose to cut back its own feature – a textbook example that the gaps affect not only new features, but existing ones too. At the same time, the fronts are shifting: Apple recently sided with Google in the DMA dispute when it came to the Commission's AI requirements. Important for context, however, is also this: not every gap in Germany is an EU gap. Services like Apple News are missing here for market and licensing reasons, and some features simply launch only with later language support – neither has anything to do with regulation.

What the EU Gets Exclusively

The flip side of the gaps are features that exist exclusively in the EU. Since March 2024, iOS has allowed alternative app marketplaces, sideloading via the web and genuine third-party browser engines here. iOS 26.0 opened the NFC chip for new payment scenarios, such as initiating payment wearables like rings directly via the iPhone. The biggest step came with iOS 26.5: since then, third-party headphones can use the proximity pairing known from AirPods – connecting via a proximity pop-up with a single tap – and smartwatches from other manufacturers receive full iPhone notifications that can be answered directly on the watch. Until then, third-party wearables could only display notifications, not respond to them; this privilege was exclusive to the Apple Watch. One limitation remains: forwarding only works to one device at a time, and turning it on for a third-party watch disables notifications on the Apple Watch. So if you wear a watch from Garmin or Huawei, it gradually gains capabilities in the EU that were previously reserved for the Apple Watch. The AirPods features for third-party wearables in the EU are tied to an iPhone account set to an EU country. According to the European Commission's roadmap, the central interoperability solutions are due to be fully rolled out over the course of 2026; alternatives to AirDrop and AirPlay are also on the requirements list. So Europe doesn't simply get fewer iOS features, but different ones: fewer Apple-exclusive convenience features, more openness for third-party devices.

Apple Features in the EU – the Key Points at a Glance

The EU gaps follow a clear logic: they almost exclusively affect features that establish exclusive connections between Apple devices or aggregate sensitive data – precisely what Apple would have to open up to competitors under the DMA. Apple Intelligence and Live Translation demonstrate that Apple delivers solutions as soon as a compliant implementation is available; iPhone Mirroring and the Maps features have been waiting in vain for up to two years, and Tap to Share, introduced at WWDC 2026, added yet another gap. Siri AI is now the biggest test case of this pattern: whether the new assistant reaches iPhone, iPad and thus also the Apple Watch in the EU depends on whether Apple and the European Commission can find a solution – something neither side has yet managed to do. Until then, users in Germany face a paradoxical geography: the more complete Apple experience isn't available in their own country, but across the border in Switzerland – not for technical reasons, but simply because a different legal system applies there.

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Frequently Asked Questions: Apple Features in the EU

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