A Look Into Apple Intelligence in macOS

p>With the release of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1, Apple introduced Apple Intelligence, an AI-powered suite designed to boost productivity across apps like Mail, Notes, Reminders, and more. Unlike cloud-based AI, Apple Intelligence processes everything on-device, ensuring privacy.

This feature enhances how you search, organize, and interact with content in some of Apple’s native apps such as Mail, Notes, Reminders, and Siri. Let’s take a look at some of the features and how you can enable and use Apple Intelligence on your Mac.

Enable Apple Intelligence

At the time of writing, Apple Intelligence is in Beta. It might not be automatically enabled on your macOS yet. You can enable it by going to System Preferences → Apple Intelligence and toggling the switch to enable it. Sometimes, however, you might find yourself having to join the waitlist.

Once you’re in, you can configure it for Siri integration and start using Apple Intelligence across some Apple apps.

Siri Integration

With Apple Intelligence, Siri has now become smarter and a bit more like ChatGPT, except that it has direct access to your operating system, allowing it to perform system-wide tasks.

You can ask Siri to perform tasks like searching for files, creating reminders, or even reading content. You can now also ask Siri to handle system-wide tasks like changing settings, opening apps, or sending messages using only natural language.

For example, you can tell Siri to switch to dark mode with this prompt: “Switch to dark mode”.

You can also ask it to set a reminder or an alarm at a specific time with this prompt: “Set an alarm for 7am”. Siri can understand more complex prompts like “Set an alarm for 7am on weekdays”, and it will set the alarm from Monday to Friday.

Or, ask it to write an email. During my test, Siri was smart enough to select the recipient and fill in the email content, but it failed to fill in the subject. I had to specify the subject manually, like this: “Send an email to Hongkiat Lim saying I’ll be heading to Singapore tomorrow. Subject: Heading to Singapore”.

Then, you can just prompt Siri with “Send” to actually send the email.

Mail App

As mentioned, Apple Intelligence is embedded in some native apps, including the Mail app. The Apple Intelligence features are available in the toolbar of the app, or when you highlight text, it will show a floating icon next to the highlighted text, giving you access to options such as:

• Proofreading to help you check your email for grammatical errors before sending.
• Rewriting which allows you to rewrite the email content or change the tone to be friendlier, more concise, or more professional.

You’ll also find a new button, Summarize, at the top of emails that lets you summarize content—a handy feature if you have a long thread of multiple emails.

Notes

Another application that benefits from Apple Intelligence is the Notes app. Similarly, you can proofread, rewrite, or summarize content as lists or tables.

Focus Integration

Apple Intelligence also integrates with the Focus feature in macOS, which allows you to filter notifications and apps based on your current activity. For example, if you’re in a meeting, you can set your device to Focus mode to minimize distractions.

With Apple Intelligence, there’s an added option called “Intelligent Breakthrough & Silencing”, which acts as an AI-powered filter for your notifications. It determines if a notification is important enough to show or if it can wait.

Wrapping Up

Apple Intelligence is a long-awaited feature in macOS, making Siri smarter and more capable of offering real-time assistance and suggestions across native apps based on your unique needs.

However, Apple Intelligence is currently in Beta, and its app integration feels limited compared to other AI tools. Siri still struggles with more complex queries, so results are currently hit or miss. It also only supports English, so features like Summary and Proofreading may not work in other languages. There are many apps that integrate with Apple Intelligence, and I look forward to seeing more advanced features from Apple in the future.

Personally, it has yet to become an assistant that will significantly improve my macOS workflow. But I’m sure we’ll get there eventually.

Last but not least, we’ve covered a few highlights, and we’ll dive deeper into additional features in upcoming articles. Stay tuned!