After weeks of using Apple Intelligence, this one feature stands out

Apple Intelligence made its way to the iPhone as part of Apple’s iOS 18.1 update and brought with it a wave of new features, like the ability to rewrite text, create photo montages from a prompt, remove objects from photos, and typing to Siri. Apple’s virtual helper also understands you better, even if you stumble over your words.

But there’s one addition that particularly stuck with me: post summaries.

iPhones that can run Apple Intelligence can display summaries of incoming texts, with the aim of helping you catch up on messages at a glance. The technology is far from perfect; it cannot process sarcasm in a meaningful way, nor can it understand context in most situations.

But it’s a perfect example of the kind of passive artificial intelligence I hope we’ll see more of on phones in 2025 and beyond. And more importantly, it helps me stay sane when I’m bombarded with messages from various sources throughout the day, whether they’re iMessages from family members or Slack updates from teammates.

As I’ve written in the past, most of the new AI features from Apple and other phone makers feel like solutions to niche problems that may not need solving (how much time do you really spend thinking about how to send a text message formula?) I often spend the whole day forgetting that these tools exist. But message summaries, even in their current form, add an extra layer of convenience to my phone without any effort on my part, which is exactly where the promise of AI for phones lies.

Read more: I tried the iPhone 16’s new visual intelligence and it feels like the future

Use message summaries in Apple Intelligence

To get message summaries, you need a compatible iPhone running iOS 18.1. Apple Intelligence is only available on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max and the iPhone 16 range, so if you have an older model you’re out of luck. Apple Intelligence is almost guaranteed to be available on new iPhones in the future, including next year’s regular iPhones (presumably called the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro), along with the rumored iPhone 17 Slim and iPhone SE 4.

The good news is that if you have an iPhone 16 model or an iPhone 15 Pro and are using Apple’s latest software, message summaries should be enabled by default if you have Apple Intelligence turned on.

But if you don’t see them, or would rather disable them, you can easily do so in your iPhone’s settings menu. Just open the Institutions app, scroll down to the Apps option and then select To inform from your list of apps. Press the Summarize messages switch to enable or disable this feature.

Apple Intelligence also summarizes notifications from third-party apps such as Slack or WhatsApp. If you would like to enable or disable these summaries, please visit Institutionscrane Notifications and select Summary of examples. Here you can manually choose which apps you want to receive notification summaries for by toggling the switch next to each app.

You can also disable Apple Intelligence completely by choosing Apple Intelligence & Siri of the Institutions menu and tap the switch.

Why message summaries are so useful

Message summaries take the iPhone’s software to the next level, making it feel smarter. Instead of having to go out of your way to find a specific feature, like the Clean Up tool for removing unwanted background objects in images, it just works without thinking about it.

It also addresses a need that affects a fundamental use of our phones: communication. I’ve seen this firsthand many times over the past few months while using the developer beta of iOS 18.1 ahead of its official release.

Of all the types of notifications I receive every day, the most common are messages, which can range from work-related updates in Slack to crazy daily banter with friends in WhatsApp or session planning with my Dungeons & Dragons group members in Discord. Things can get chaotic when I can’t check my phone for long periods of the workday, which usually results in a slew of alerts and messages that I have to catch up on.

Luckily, the iPhone’s message summaries helped with this, sort of. At a glance I can at least see what my posts are about before I dive in. I can tell if my colleagues are asking for help with something or just chatting about a new story idea. Or that the dozens of text messages that just came in from my friends are the result of an emergency or just friendly banter.

Apple Intelligence still has a long way to go when it comes to accuracy, so I wouldn’t recommend relying on these summaries instead of checking your messages. There are plenty of times when it misinterprets the meaning behind a message because it lacks the level of understanding that only people – especially people who know each other well and communicate often – can have.

Most of the time, these accidents result in nothing more than a good laugh. But my colleague Nelson Aguilar received misinterpretations that are much more troubling. When a friend texted him about a difficult hike and noted that they were “dead” tired, Apple Intelligence’s summary said the hike was fatal.

It’s yet another reminder that AI, whether Apple’s text summaries, ChatGPT answers, or Google search summaries, is no substitute for the real thing. But for now, I’m grateful that I can at least see if friends or family are texting me because of an emergency or just for a laugh by looking at my lock screen.