These 3 Apple Intelligence Features in iOS 18.1 Are the Ones You’ll Really Use

With the release of iOS 18.1 on Monday, Apple Intelligence is finally coming to the iPhone of the general public — that is, if you own an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Pro (or their Plus and Max variants). Judging by Apple’s advertising push, you’d think that this new technology would change the way you use your iPhone in significant ways. (Also available on MacOS 15.1 Sequoia and iPadOS 18.1 on Macs and iPads with M-series processors, and later iPad mini.)

But you shouldn’t expect your iPhone to feel much different.

I’ve been using Apple Intelligence features in developer and public betas for a few weeks, and while there are some promising future features, what we’re starting with is quite modest.

After installing iOS 18.1 and get access to Apple Intelligencehere’s what you can realistically expect. More features will be added as time goes on, and Apple Intelligence is still official beta software. But this is where Apple begins its AI age.

Abbreviations bring TL;DR to your books

In an age where there are so many demands on our attention and seemingly little time to dig into long articles…Excuse me, what was I saying?

Oh, right: How many times have you wanted the “too long; illiterate” version of not just long emails but a firehose of communication blasting your way? The ability to summarize notifications, Mail messages and web pages is perhaps the most common and featureless feature of Apple Intelligence so far.

When a notification arrives, such as a text from a friend or group in Messages, iPhone creates a short, one-sentence summary.

Sometimes the abbreviations are vague, and sometimes they’re unintentionally funny, but so far I’ve found them more useful than not. Snapshots can also be generated from alerts by third-party apps like news or social media apps — though I suspect my outdoor security camera is picking up too many passers-by over time and not telling me 10 people are parked at the door.

That said, Apple Intelligence doesn’t understand sarcasm or parsing — you can turn off the abbreviations if you like.

You can also generate a long summary of emails in the Mail app: Tap Summarize button at the top of the message to view a list of contents in a few words.

In Safari, if you’re looking at a page where the Reader feature is available, press the button Page Menu button in the address bar, press Show Student and press the button Summary button at the top of the page.

Siri gets brighter and better communication

I was pleased at the time of the iOS 18 and iPhone 16 releases that Apple Intelligence’s main visual indicator — the full-screen, color-on-edge Siri animation — was notably absent. Apple even lit up the edges of the giant glass cube of its Apple Fifth Avenue store in New York City as a Siri search.

Instead, iOS 18 used the old Siri sphere.

Now, the modern look of Siri has arrived in iOS 18.1, but only for devices that support Apple Intelligence. If you’re still tapping your fingers on the Apple Intelligence queue, you’ll see the Siri sphere now.

With the new look there are a few improvements to Siri’s interaction: It’s more forgiving if you stumble on a question, like saying the wrong word or interrupting yourself in the middle of a thought. And it’s best to listen after you deliver results, so you can ask related follow-up questions.

However, the ability to customize responses based on what Apple Intelligence knows about you is at hand. iOS 18.1 also doesn’t yet integrate ChatGPT as an alternative source of information — that integration was recently rolled out in iOS 18.2 developer beta.

Remove distractions from your photos using Clean up in the Photos app

Until iOS 18.1, the Photos app on iPhone and iPad lacked a simple retouch feature. Dust on the camera lens? Trash on the floor? Sorry, you need to deal with those and other glitches in the Photos app on macOS even if you’re using a third-party app.

Now Apple Intelligence integrates Clean Up, an AI-enhanced cleaning tool, into the Photos app. When you edit the picture and press the button Clean up button, the iPhone analyzes the image and suggests objects that can be removed by highlighting them. One-tap or draw a circle on an area — the app erases those areas and uses artificial intelligence to fill in the physical pixels.

In this first physical state, Cleanup is not perfect, and you will usually get better results from other dedicated photo editors. But for quickly removing the irritation from the photos, it’s fine.

Watch this: Apple Intelligence Impressions: Don’t Expect Big Changes

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