Apple Intelligence is here, and these are the features it's still missing

Virtually every single tech giant has jumped on the AI bandwagon and Apple is no exception. The iPhone maker has eschewed its typical wait-and-watch approach to new technologies in favor of an aggressive feature push to compete with Google and Samsung. And that’s how we got Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI features that promise to make your iPhone, iPad, and Mac more proactive and useful. But not every Apple Intelligence feature will make its way to your device right now and we’re still waiting in anticipation for some of the best features.

So in this article, let’s break down which Apple Intelligence features you can use today, and which ones you’ll need to wait a bit longer for.

Apple Intelligence features available today

The first set of Apple Intelligence features arrived with the iOS 18.1 update, starting October 28, 2024. Another set of features released in the following months, including the latest iOS 18.4. The list of currently available Apple Intelligence features include:

Writing Tools

You can now call upon Apple Intelligence to summarize, proof-read, and rewrite in any app or text field. Simply tap and hold any piece of editable text and you should see a list of available options. This is a handy feature to detect and correct errors and serves as an alternative to third-party tools like Grammarly. The rewrite tool also allows you to switch between various tones like Professional, Friendly, and Concise.

The December update will expand Writing tools with the ability to dictate specific writing styles. You could ask Apple Intelligence to rewrite a piece of text as a poem, for example.

AI-assisted notification management

Notifications have never been iOS’ strong suit but Apple Intelligence aims to remedy this long-standing deficiency with intelligent summaries. It can truncate and summarize dozens of chat messages, for example, saving you from reading through entire group conversations.

The Mail app will also use AI to push relevant emails like boarding passes to the top of your inbox. You can also see a summary below each email right within your inbox. When it’s time to respond, a feature called Smart Reply can help with drafting your reply. This is similar to suggested replies in Gmail, albeit with suggestions spanning more than just a few words.

Call recordings and summaries

The iPhone can finally record phone calls and will even create AI-generated summaries based on your conversations. Apple uses an on-device model for this task, so your personal data never leaves your device. All parties on the phone call also get notified when you activate this feature. You can also record audio clips within the Notes app and have Apple Intelligence transcribe and summarize them for you.

A slightly more capable Siri

The first Apple Intelligence update gives Siri a brand new coat of paint. Specifically, you’ll now see a glowing light around the display’s edges when you invoke the digital assistant on an iPhone or iPad. However, don’t expect too many changes besides this redesign — the full Siri overhaul with generative AI capabilities will only arrive in subsequent updates. Still, you can now type Siri commands for the first time instead of using your voice and Apple says its natural language capabilities have improved with this update.

For now, the iOS 18.2 update brought along an optional ChatGPT integration. This means you can now ask ChatGPT open-ended questions whenever Siri says cannot handle complex queries. This should hopefully lead to more accurate responses. The Writing tools feature has a similar ChatGPT integration too. Specifically, a new Compose feature can turn a short text-based prompt into a full piece of content — similar to Gmail’s Help Me Write, but for any text field.

A gallery app that rivals Google Photos

The Photos app got a visual overhaul with iOS 18 and Apple Intelligence now fills in the gaps to make it a more full-fledged Google Photos competitor. It now includes natural language search, allowing you to use descriptive queries like “Sam playing basketball in blue shorts” to unearth matching shots from your library.

Next, a new Clean Up editing tool is meant to rival Google’s Magic Editor — it allows you to draw around distracting objects to eliminate them. The AI will fill in the gaps, making it look like the shot was captured without the removed elements.

Finally, a new Memories feature lets you create short movies using a text-based prompt like “Food highlights from our Thailand trip”. Apple Intelligence then uses its image intepretation skills to stitch together a storyline based on your text description and the pictures that match your criteria.

Image Playground and Genmoji

Similar to Google’s Pixel Studio app, Apple’s Image Playground app will allow you to create cartoon-style images from simple text-based prompts. You can pick from a variety of designs and themes or provide your own descriptions for the AI to work on.

On the subject of AI image generation, you can now create custom emoji based on your contacts’ photos, dubbed Genmoji, using a simple text-based prompt. You can also add your own photos to influence the final look. To access this feature, switch to the emoji keyboard in any text field and enter a description.

Apple Intelligence features coming in late 2025 and beyond

Unfortunately, some of the best parts of Apple Intelligence won’t arrive until the launch of the iPhone 17 or possibly even later. This includes the next-generation Siri that Apple showcased all the way back in June. This version of Siri will be able to read your screen’s context and communicate with other apps. Onscreen awareness is one such feature, which allows Siri to take the contents of your screen and relay it to other apps. For example, Apple’s demo showed that you can send the details of a restaurant reservation to a friend via a messaging app with just a simple voice command.

Apple has rarely overpromised and underdelivered but it has seemingly done so with AI, according to many insider leaks and industry experts.

Which iPhone, iPad, and Mac do I need for Apple Intelligence?

Even though the iOS 18 update will make its way to devices as old as the iPhone XS, the AI suite won’t make its way to the vast majority of devices. This is because several components of Apple Intelligence use on-device models for better privacy, which requires newer hardware and extra memory. This is similar to Google only bringing Gemini Nano to newer Android devices. To that end, you’ll need one of the following devices to use Apple Intelligence:

• iPhone 16 series
• iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max
• iPad with the M1 chip or later
• iPad Mini with the A17 Pro chip
• Any Mac with an M1 chip or later

How to enable and use Apple Intelligence

To use Apple Intelligence, you’ll first need to update your iPhone to at least iOS 18.1 and Mac to a minimum macOS 15.1. Next, you’ll need to change your device’s language to one of those supported by Apple Intelligence today. Most major languages are supported now, including French, Spanish, and Chinese, provided you update to iOS 18.4 or later. Apple Intelligence also isn’t geo-restricted so you can use it in most countries around the world, as long as you change the language.

Meeting these two requirements should be enough for your iOS or Mac device to automatically download the required AI models.  Simply navigate to Settings > Apple Intelligence and check the status of the feature.