Apple Intelligence It finally arrived as part of the iPhone last month iOS 18.1 The update introduces a number of new features, including rewriting text, creating photo montages based on prompts, removing objects from photos, and typing to Siri. Apple’s virtual assistant is better at understanding you, even when you stumble over your words.

But there is one addition that particularly sticks out to me: Message summaries.

Workable iPhones Apple Intelligence It can provide summaries of incoming messages and is intended to help you capture messages at a glance. The technology is far from perfect; cannot process sarcasm logically and cannot understand context in most cases.

But it’s an excellent example of the type of passive AI I hope to see more of On phones in 2025 and later. And more importantly, it helps me stay sane when I’m bombarded with messages from all sources throughout the day, whether it’s iMessages from family members or Slack updates from teammates.

like i do written in the pastMany of the new AI features Apple and other phone makers are introducing feel like solutions to specific problems that don’t need to be solved (how much time do you really spend thinking about how to write a text message?) Most of the time, I’m running my own errands. Day by day I forget that these tools exist. But message digests, even in their current form, add an extra layer of convenience to my phone without requiring any effort on my part; This is exactly the promise of AI for phones.

Read more: I Tried the iPhone 16’s New Visual Intelligence and It Feels Like the Future

How to use message summaries in Apple Intelligence

To get message digests, you must have a compatible iPhone running iOS 18.1. Apple Intelligence is available only at: iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max And iPhone 16 lineup, so if you have an older model you’re out of luck. The good news is that if you have any of these devices and are running Apple’s latest software, message digests should be on by default.

But if you can’t see them or would prefer to turn them off, you can easily do so from your iPhone’s settings menu. Just hungry Settings Scroll down to the app Applications select and then Messages from your list of apps. press Summarize Messages Toggle to turn this feature on or off.

Apple Intelligence also summarizes notifications from third-party apps like Slack or WhatsApp. If you want to turn these summaries on or off, go to: Settingsfaucet Notifications and choose Summarize Previews. From here, you can choose which apps you want to receive notification summaries for by toggling the switch next to each app.

You can also select Apple Intelligence to turn it off completely. Apple Intelligence and Siri from Settings Open the menu and tap the switch.

Why are message digests so useful?

Message summaries improve quality iPhones Use software in a way that makes you feel smarter. Instead of having to go out of your way to find a specific feature like the Cleanup tool to get rid of unwanted background objects in images, it works without a second thought.

It also addresses a need that impacts the core use case of our phones: communication. I’ve witnessed this firsthand many times while using the developer beta over the past few months. iOS 18.1 before its official release.

Of all the types of notifications I receive every day, the most frequent messages are messages, which can range from work-related updates on Slack to silly casual jokes with friends on WhatsApp to scheduling sessions with my Dungeons & Dragons party members on Discord. Things can get chaotic when I can’t check my phone for long periods of time during the workday, often resulting in a multitude of alerts and messages to keep track of.

Fortunately, the iPhone’s message summaries have helped somewhat in this regard. At a glance, I can at least see what my messages are about before diving in. I can tell if my coworkers want my help with something or are just chatting about a new story idea. Or whether the dozen recent text messages from my friends were due to an emergency or just a friendly conversation.

Apple Intelligence has a long way to go in terms of accuracy, so I wouldn’t recommend relying on these summaries instead of checking your messages. There are many situations where he misinterprets the meaning behind a message because he lacks the level of understanding that only humans can have, especially those who know each other well and communicate frequently.

Most of the time these mishaps result in nothing but a good laugh. But my colleague Nelson Aguilar has been subject to misinterpretations These are much more worrying.. When a friend texted her about a tough hike and said they were “tired to death,” the Apple Intelligence summary said the hike was fatal.

It’s another reminder that AI cannot replace the real thing, whether it’s text summaries from Apple, replies from ChatGPT, or search summaries from Google. But for now, I’m grateful that I can at least tell by looking at my lock screen whether my friends or family are texting me for an emergency or just for a laugh.