Actually Works

Actually Works · Episode 69

14 / 80

Your iPhone rewrites your notifications, and it has gotten them wrong.

Apple's iPhone User Guide says your iPhone can summarize long or stacked notifications with Apple Intelligence. In early 2025 Apple paused these summaries for news apps after the BBC complained about false headlines. Here is the exact path to check whether it is on and to turn it off, or to choose which apps it touches.

The exact clicks

  1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
  2. Tap Notifications.
  3. Tap Summarize Notifications. If the Summarize Notifications switch is on, your iPhone is summarizing notifications for you.
  4. To stop all summaries, turn Summarize Notifications off. That is the whole fix.
  5. To keep summaries only for some apps: with Summarize Notifications on, tap Choose Notifications to Summarize, tap the apps you want, then tap Summarize Selected Notifications. To change it later, tap the button next to an app.
  6. Optional: if you do not see Summarize Notifications at all, your iPhone may not support it. Apple's page says it needs an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or any iPhone 16 model or later, and that Apple Intelligence is not available in all languages or regions.
  7. Optional: this video's pause frame shows the same three taps: Settings, Notifications, Summarize Notifications. Pause on it, take a screenshot and send it to someone who only reads the preview.

What changes

  • Verified live (13.10.2026) against Apple's iPhone User Guide page "Summarize notifications and reduce interruptions with Apple Intelligence on iPhone" (support.apple.com/guide/iphone/iph1fbe7d2b9/ios, iOS 27 version): the Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications path, the on/off switch, Choose Notifications to Summarize, and the device requirements.
  • The BBC complaint and Apple's pause of news-app summaries are from press coverage of the BBC's complaint and Apple's statement (December 2024 and January 2025), including a darts-final alert that announced a winner before the final was played. This is secondary reporting, not an Apple page.
  • Topic chosen from the 13.10.2026 growth research: concrete "how to turn off X on iPhone" is the kind of video that did best in a small YouTube Shorts scan. This episode is also the first test of a built-in pause frame to earn saves and sends.

What it will not do

  • Not said in the video because the sources do not settle it: whether news summaries are back and under what warning, how often summaries are wrong today, and whether a given country or language has the feature.
  • On iOS 27 one press report says there is no single master switch for all of Apple Intelligence any more; the Summarize Notifications switch above is what this guide covers. Summaries inside Messages and Mail are separate settings that were not checked against an Apple page.
  • This channel did not test this on a live iPhone. Menu names are taken from Apple's help page; your screen may differ slightly depending on your iOS version.