Since iOS 5 in 2011, the iPhone and iPad have included Notification Center, a central place to find alerts from various apps in chronological order. Starting with iOS 27, Apple is making a major change to how users open Notification Center. The beta builds show that the change will ship this fall.

Siri AI takes over the swipe gesture for a lot of the iPhone and iPad top edge. Opening Notification Center is unchanged on iOS 27 and iPad OS 27 by default, but enabling Siri AI changes a key swipe gesture on both devices. One way of invoking Siri AI is by swiping down from the center of the top edge of your device; this previously opened Notification Center. You can still access Notification Center by swiping down from the top‑left corner once Siri AI is enabled. Alerts now animate in from the top left corner, guiding users toward Notification Center’s smaller surface area.

After 15 years of muscle memory, it’ll take time to gauge whether this change is worth it. Early feedback is overwhelmingly positive about Apple’s new Siri AI system, though without a setting to disable the center‑edge swipe, users must build new muscle memory to avoid it.