Apple has registered Apple Intelligence for use on iPad and Mac in China, taking the next step towards bringing its artificial intelligence features to tablets and computers in the country. The registration was reported on Monday, 9 November 2026, after China's cyberspace regulator confirmed the filing to Reuters.

China requires generative AI services to be registered with regulators before they can be offered to the public, and Apple had previously completed the same step for the iPhone in July. The new filing covers tablets and notebooks, which means iPads and Mac computers could follow the iPhone onto the service. AppleInsider reported the registration, and TechTimes reported the same filing on the same day.

A two-year wait is nearly over

Apple Intelligence first switched on in the United States in October 2024, but users in China have waited more than two years for it. Apple confirmed on 31 October that the first features would arrive on iPhone in China with a developer beta of iOS 27.3 on 4 November, ahead of a public release in December. At the time, the company said support for other platforms would follow once the necessary approvals were obtained, and the new registration is that approval process moving forward.

The features coming to China are a curated subset of those available elsewhere, adapted for Chinese users. They include translation, Writing Tools, Visual Intelligence using the camera, Photos Clean Up, memory videos, natural language search in Photos, Smart Reply and audio transcription in Notes. The next-generation Siri upgrade shown at Apple's developer conference this year will not be included at launch.

Built with Alibaba's Qwen

Apple is working with Alibaba to power the Chinese version of the service. Reuters has reported that Alibaba's Qwen language model will be integrated into Apple Intelligence for compatible iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro devices in China, and Apple has said it is still working with Alibaba to add Qwen support within Siri. Alibaba has said it will not use the requests users send, or the responses generated, to train its models.

Registration is a procedural step, not a final approval, and AppleInsider notes there is a small chance the process could still go wrong. But the filing removes the main regulatory barrier that kept iPad and Mac out of the launch, and Apple now plans to release Apple Intelligence in China with the public version of iOS 27.3 in December. No specific software version or timing has been announced for iPad and Mac beyond that, but the registrations point to the updates arriving together.

What it means for users in China

For Apple users in China, the move closes a long gap with the rest of the world. Supported iPhones include the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, every iPhone 16 and later, the iPhone Air and the iPhone Duo, and the features will need to be switched on by the user. The China launch is a test of how far a US company can go in bringing generative AI to the world's second-largest smartphone market while working inside Beijing's rules, and the iPad and Mac registrations show Apple intends to go further than the iPhone alone.