How Apple Intelligence Works with Messages: Summaries, Smart Reply, Writing Tools and Genmoji

What you need first

Apple Intelligence features in Messages first arrived with iOS 18.1 and carry on in iOS 27. The limit is the hardware: Apple Intelligence on iPhone needs an A17 Pro chip or newer.

The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus run iOS 27 but miss out on Apple Intelligence; our page on iOS 27 on iPhone 15 explains the difference. Language and region also matter, which our guide to Apple Intelligence availability covers.

Turn it on

1. Open Settings › Apple Intelligence & Siri.
2. Turn on Apple Intelligence and tap Continue.
3. Stay on Wi-Fi while the models download.
4. Open Messages once the download finishes.

If the toggle is missing or the download stalls, our walkthrough on how to enable Apple Intelligence on iPhone has the fixes.

Message summaries

Summaries are the feature you will notice first. When you come back to a group chat with dozens of unread messages, a one-line summary appears under that conversation in your list, so you know what happened before you open it.

Say your family has been planning a holiday dinner while you were in meetings, and 30 messages have piled up. Instead of scrolling through recipes and tangents, you might see something like: "Dinner at Mum's, 3pm Thursday. Bring apple pie. John is vegetarian now." That's enough to know whether you need to reply now or later.

Where summaries fall short

Summaries strip out tone, jokes and emotional context. For anything sensitive, such as a disagreement, bad news or a relationship conversation, read the messages themselves. A summary is a preview, not a replacement.

The same summarising appears for notifications, and in Mail for long email threads; our guide to Apple Intelligence summaries in Mail covers that side.

Smart Reply

Smart Reply suggests responses based on what the other person actually wrote. Messages had basic suggestions before, but Apple Intelligence makes them fit the context much better.

For example, if a friend writes "Want to grab lunch tomorrow? I'm thinking that new Thai place around noon if you're free", suggestions along these lines might appear:

• "Sounds great, see you at noon."
• "Can't do tomorrow. How about Wednesday?"
• "Thai works for me. What time exactly?"

Tap one to drop it into the reply field, then edit it before sending if you want to add something. It is most useful for quick confirmations and logistics, less so for anything that needs your own voice.

Writing Tools

Writing Tools work in Messages the same way they do across the system, and they matter more here than you might think. A text typed in a hurry can easily come across wrong.

1. Type your message in the text field.
2. Select the text.
3. Choose Writing Tools from the options that appear.
4. Pick what you want, then review the result before sending.

Our full Writing Tools guide covers the rest of the options and how to use them in other apps.

Genmoji

Genmoji is Apple's AI-generated emoji. If the emoji you want doesn't exist, you describe it and Apple Intelligence draws it.

1. In a conversation, tap the text field and then the emoji button.
2. Tap the Genmoji button at the top right of the emoji keyboard.
3. Type a description, such as "dancing taco" or "cat wearing sunglasses".
4. Swipe through the options and tap Add.

Genmoji also work as Tapback reactions: touch and hold a message, scroll past the standard reactions and pick one. Recipients on recent iOS versions see them inline; people on older versions or Android get an image. Our Genmoji tutorial covers making Genmoji of friends, saving them as stickers and writing better prompts.

Privacy: what happens to your messages

Most Apple Intelligence processing happens on the iPhone itself, using its Neural Engine. When a request needs more power than the phone has, Apple sends it to Private Cloud Compute, which Apple designed so data is used only for that request and not kept. For the Messages features here, that means your conversations are not stored on a server or used to build a profile of you.

If you would rather not have a feature at all, you can switch individual options off in Settings without turning off Apple Intelligence entirely.

What to do next

Give the features a couple of weeks. The first few days feel odd while you remember they are there, and after that the useful ones settle into how you text. When you are comfortable in Messages, our top Apple Intelligence tricks show what else your iPhone can do.

Frequently asked questions