Apple confirms side-button support for 3rd-party assistants in Japan

A new document in Apple’s Developer blog confirms that users in Japan will be able to reassign the side button to launch third-party voice-based conversational apps, rather than Siri. Here are the details.

Exclusive to Japan (for now?)

Earlier today, we shared a few details about new code in iOS 26.2 beta 3, which shows that Apple is working on letting users replace Siri when pressing the iPhone’s side button:

There’s a new ‘SystemVoiceAssistant’ system app that…