This is how Apple Intelligence on your Mac can make everyday tasks easier
I ignored Apple Intelligence for a few weeks after the update.
I knew the new tools were there, but I assumed they’d be another set of features I’d try once and forget about.
Then I needed to find a screenshot I knew was saved somewhere. So instead of scrolling through Photos, I tried describing what I remembered in the search field.
It worked well enough to make me curious about what else I’d been ignoring.
A quick note before you try any of this
Before you start hunting for these features, make sure your Mac supports Apple Intelligence.
You’ll need a Mac with Apple silicon, macOS Sequoia 15.1 or later, and 7 GB of storage on the device. Your Mac and Siri also need to use the same supported language.
Apple keeps the full list of compatible devices, languages, regions, and other requirements here.
If it’s available on your Mac but turned off, go to System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri.
When a quick message doesn’t need a full editing session
I’m not handing my writing over to Apple Intelligence, but Writing Tools are useful for messages that don’t need a full editing pass.
If an email is too long or more formal than I want, I select the text, сontrol-click it, and choose Writing Tools. From there, I can make it more concise, change the tone, or proofread it.
I still check the result, but it saves me from over-editing something routine.
When “I’ll read it later” probably means never
In Safari, I click the Page Menu button, choose Show Reader, then click Summarize to get a shorter version of the webpage. I can also select the webpage text and choose Writing Tools > Summary.
Get Kateryna Rudenko’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
I use it as a first pass rather than a replacement for reading. If the summary tells me the article has what I’m looking for, I go back and read the needed parts properly. If it doesn’t, I haven’t had to work through the entire page to find that out.
Finding the screenshot I can picture but can’t locate
Screenshots are very good at making sense when I save them and becoming mysterious later.
Apple Intelligence lets me search Photos using a normal description of what I remember. I click the search field, type what I’m looking for, and can then filter the results to Screenshots.
That’s much easier when I remember what was on the screen but have no idea when I saved it.
Turning a long message into reminders
If an email, note, or webpage contains several things I need to remember, I can share it to Reminders and let Apple Intelligence pull out possible tasks.
I open the text, click Share > Reminders, then review the suggested reminders. I can add everything or choose only the ones I want. Selecting only a specific part of the text works too.
It saves me from rereading a paragraph just to manually turn “send this, check that, follow up on Friday” into separate tasks.
One setting I ended up keeping on
I was more hesitant about Reduce Interruptions because I don’t love the idea of AI deciding what deserves my attention. But it’s more adjustable than I expected.
In System Settings > Focus > Reduce Interruptions, I can still decide which people and apps are always allowed or silenced. Apple Intelligence then tries to let important notifications through while holding back less urgent ones.
I use it when I want fewer interruptions without going completely offline.
I still don’t use everything
I don’t use every Apple Intelligence feature on my Mac, and I don’t think I need to.
I haven’t found much use for Genmoji or Image Playground in my everyday Mac routine. They’re fun to experiment with, but I usually forget they’re there.
I also left Siri out of this list. I also left Siri out. It already has some Apple Intelligence upgrades, but the more personal Siri features Apple has announced are still in development.
The ones that stayed are tied to everyday tasks I was already doing. Once those little jobs became easier, Apple Intelligence stopped feeling like a feature I was supposed to find a use for.
