How to turn off AI summary on iPhone?
Go to Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications and switch it off. You can also leave it on and disable it per app under "Summarize Notifications From" — useful if summaries help for newsletters but mangle your messages. On Mac: System Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications.
Why — the first-principles explanation
Notification summaries fail more often than Apple's other AI features, and the reason is structural rather than a bug Apple can patch away.
Summarizing is lossy compression. You throw away detail to save space, and the model decides what's disposable. That trade works when the input is long — compressing a 2,000-word article down to three sentences discards mostly redundancy. But a notification is already compressed. Someone took a thought and squeezed it into 40 characters. There is no redundancy left to throw away. So when the model compresses it again, it can only discard signal — and the first thing to go is usually the qualifier: the "not," the "maybe," the "if." That's how you get a summary that cheerfully inverts the meaning of the message it summarized.
It gets worse when several notifications get merged. The model has to build one coherent sentence out of unrelated fragments from different senders, with no context about which matters. Coherence is exactly what a language model is built to produce — so it produces a fluent, confident sentence stitching together things that were never related. The output reads perfectly and means nothing.
This is why the per-app control matters more than the master switch. Summaries genuinely help where the input is long and low-stakes: newsletters, promotional mail, group chats you've muted anyway. They hurt where the input is short and high-stakes: texts from people you care about, delivery alerts, security codes. The right setting is usually not "off" — it's "off for the things that matter." Apple's per-app list under "Summarize Notifications From" is where that lives, and most people never open it.
An example that makes it click
Imagine a friend who reads your mail and shouts the gist upstairs. For a 10-page insurance letter, that's a gift — "your rate went up twelve bucks." Perfect.
Now imagine you get a postcard that says "Don't come Tuesday." He shouts: "Something about Tuesday!" That's not helpful, it's dangerous — and it's not because he's careless. There was simply nothing to trim. Every word was load-bearing. So you tell him: keep reading the insurance letters, leave the postcards alone. That's the per-app setting.
How to do it
- iPhone or iPad — open Settings and tap Notifications.
- Tap Summarize Notifications.
- To stop all summaries, turn off the Summarize Notifications toggle at the top.
- To keep summaries only where they help, leave the main toggle on and use the "Summarize Notifications From" app list to switch off individual apps — turn it off for Messages, Mail from real people, and delivery or security alerts.
- Mac — click the Apple menu > System Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications, then turn it off (the per-app list may be labeled "Summarize Notification Previews From").
- To remove summaries along with every other Apple AI feature: Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri, then turn off Apple Intelligence.
- For a managed device or a child's device, use Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Intelligence & Siri to restrict Apple Intelligence features.
- Test it: send yourself a couple of messages and check that the notifications arrive as written rather than merged into one sentence.
Key facts
- Notification summaries are controlled on iPhone and iPad at Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications, with both a master toggle and a per-app list.
- On Mac the equivalent control is System Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications.
- Summaries can be disabled per app while remaining on elsewhere, via the "Summarize Notifications From" list.
- Turning off Apple Intelligence entirely at Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri removes notification summaries along with all other Apple Intelligence features.
- Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Intelligence & Siri can restrict Apple Intelligence features on a managed or child's device.
- Notification summaries are only available on devices that support Apple Intelligence; unsupported iPhones never show them.
▶ The 60-second explainer (script)
Settings, Notifications, Summarize Notifications, toggle it off. Done. But before you kill all of them — there's a smarter setting most people never find, and it's worth two minutes. First, why these summaries go so wrong. Summarizing is lossy compression: you throw away detail to save space, and the model picks what's disposable. That works great on a two-thousand-word article — you're mostly discarding redundancy. But a notification is already compressed. Somebody took a thought and crushed it into forty characters. There's no redundancy left. So when the model compresses it again, the only thing left to throw away is signal. And the first thing to go is usually the qualifier — the not, the maybe, the if. That's exactly how you get a summary that cheerfully reverses what the message said. It's worse when it merges several notifications. Now the model has to build one coherent sentence out of unrelated fragments from different people. And coherence is precisely what a language model is built to produce. So it hands you a fluent, confident sentence stitching together things that were never related. Reads perfectly. Means nothing. Which tells you the real fix. Summaries genuinely help where input is long and low-stakes — newsletters, promos, muted group chats. They hurt where input is short and high-stakes — texts from people you love, delivery alerts, security codes. So don't flip the master switch. Go to Settings, Notifications, Summarize Notifications, and use the Summarize Notifications From list. Leave it on for the junk. Turn it off for Messages and anything time-sensitive. On a Mac it's System Settings, Notifications, same place. And if you want all of Apple Intelligence gone, that's Settings, Apple Intelligence and Siri, one toggle.
What authoritative sources say
People also ask
Can I keep summaries for some apps but not others?
Yes, and it's the better setup. Under Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications, use the "Summarize Notifications From" list to turn summaries off for Messages and alerts while keeping them for newsletters.
Why do the summaries get things backwards so often?
Because notifications are already compressed. There's no filler to discard, so the model drops meaningful words — often qualifiers like "not" or "can't" — and the summary inverts the message.
Does turning off summaries disable all of Apple Intelligence?
No. The Summarize Notifications toggle only affects summaries. To remove every Apple Intelligence feature, turn off Apple Intelligence in Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri.
I don't see the Summarize Notifications option. Why?
Your device probably doesn't support Apple Intelligence, or it hasn't been enabled. The setting only appears on supported hardware running a compatible iOS version.