Importance Score: 70 / 100 🔴
Despite an initial mixed reception marked by inaccurate message digests and delayed enhancements to Siri, Apple Intelligence is demonstrating practical utility beyond mere hype. While features like Image Playground capture attention, it’s the less flashy, yet consistently helpful functionalities that are proving valuable in everyday use. The recent iOS 18.4 update introduced Prioritize Notifications, a feature favored by many for its ability to highlight crucial alerts on compatible iPhone models, including iPhone 15 Pro and the forthcoming iPhone 16 series.
Discover Practical Apple Intelligence Features in iOS 18.4
For users with a supported iPhone—specifically, the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16E, iPhone 16, and iPhone 16 Pro models (including Plus and Max variations)—there are several Apple Intelligence features becoming indispensable in daily routines. As Apple Intelligence continues its beta phase, these initial tools signal the direction of Apple’s foray into artificial intelligence.
Alternative Perspective: For those hesitant about adopting Apple Intelligence or preferring a more mature iteration, complete deactivation or selective feature usage remains straightforward.
Priority Notifications: Stay Informed on What Matters Most
iOS 18.4 incorporates Prioritize Notifications, an unobtrusive yet effective smart notification enhancement. This Apple Intelligence-driven feature intelligently elevates potentially urgent notifications to the forefront of the lock screen display, distinguished by a subtle visual cue. Early experiences indicate this includes weather advisories, messages from frequent contacts, and emails containing actionable items or approaching deadlines.
Activation is simple: Navigate to Settings > Notifications > Prioritize Notifications and toggle the feature on. App-specific priority alerts can also be managed within the same settings panel. The system relies on AI algorithms to discern notification importance, and initial performance appears promising.
Intelligent Summaries: Condense Information Overload
In an age characterized by information overload and diminished attention spans, the demand for concise content consumption is ever-increasing. Apple Intelligence addresses this with its summarization capabilities, offering “too long; didn’t read” (TL;DR) versions of notifications, emails, and web pages—a subtle yet pervasive aid in managing digital communication.
Upon receiving a notification, such as a text message, the iPhone generates a brief, single-sentence summary, providing immediate context without requiring full engagement.
While occasional summaries might be ambiguous or unintentionally humorous, their overall utility in quickly grasping message essence is undeniable. Summarization extends to third-party app alerts, though accuracy can vary depending on the notification context.
Despite its strengths, Apple Intelligence‘s summary function may falter with nuanced language like sarcasm or colloquialisms. Users retain the option to disable summaries if preferred.
Email summarization within the Mail application is also available: a Summarize button at the message header provides a condensed overview. In Safari, accessing Reader mode and then selecting the Summary option at the page top offers article synopses.
Enhanced Siri Interaction: A Refined Digital Assistant
The visual evolution of Siri with Apple Intelligence—a full-screen animation with colored edges—was notably absent during the initial iOS 18 and iPhone 16 announcements, despite its promotional prominence. iOS 18 initially retained the familiar Siri sphere.
With iOS 18.1, the updated Siri interface is now present on Apple Intelligence-compatible devices.
This visual refresh is accompanied by enhanced interaction capabilities. Siri demonstrates improved tolerance for imperfect queries, accommodating stumbles or mid-sentence corrections. Moreover, it exhibits better contextual awareness, facilitating follow-up questions after delivering initial results.
Personalized responses based on user-specific Apple Intelligence insights are anticipated in future updates. iOS 18.2 introduced ChatGPT integration, offering an alternative information source. When Siri lacks an immediate answer, users are prompted to utilize ChatGPT, accessible with or without a dedicated account.
Tap to Siri: Discreet Assistant Access
A particularly user-friendly Apple Intelligence addition is Tap to Siri, enabling silent assistant invocation, bypassing the “Hey Siri” voice command. In households with multiple Apple devices, this resolves the ambiguity of which device will respond. Furthermore, it addresses user discomfort with verbal interactions in public settings.
Activating Tap to Siri involves a simple double-tap on the iPhone or iPad screen’s bottom edge, summoning the Siri interface with a keyboard for text input.
For Mac users, a customizable keyboard shortcut can be set via System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri, under Keyboard shortcut options like Press Either Command Key Twice.
While requiring typing, this method allows for precise queries and circumvents potential misinterpretations of spoken commands.
Clean Up Tool in Photos: Remove Image Imperfections
Prior to iOS 18.1, the iPhone and iPad Photos app lacked integrated retouching capabilities. Addressing minor image flaws necessitated macOS Photos or third-party applications.
Apple Intelligence now incorporates Clean Up, an AI-driven tool within the Photos app. Upon selecting Clean Up during image editing, the iPhone analyzes the photo, suggesting potential removals via highlights. Tapping highlighted areas or manually circling distractions prompts the app to erase and contextually fill the space using generative AI.
While Clean Up, in its initial form, may not match the sophistication of dedicated image editors, it offers a convenient solution for swift removal of unwanted photo elements.
Reduce Interruptions Focus Mode: Enhanced Task Focus
iPhone Focus modes, like Do Not Disturb, are valuable for minimizing distractions. Custom Focus modes further refine control over notifications. The new Apple Intelligence-enhanced Reduce Interruptions Focus mode provides a more dynamic filtering mechanism.
When active, Reduce Interruptions intelligently filters notifications, allowing potentially critical alerts—even those outside pre-defined criteria—to surface. Examples include weather alerts or bank notifications for significant transactions.
Activation is via Control Center: tap the Focus button and select Reduce Interruptions.
Explore additional Apple Intelligence features such as Genmoji creation, Image Wand utilization, and options to selectively disable Apple Intelligence functionalities for a customized user experience.