How to Use Apple Intelligence Writing Tools on Mac in macOS Sequoia

Crafting polished emails, professional proposals, and clear documentation often requires multiple rounds of proofreading and tone adjustment. With the release of macOS Sequoia 15.1 and Apple Intelligence, Mac users gain access to systemwide, on-device AI editing assistance known as Writing Tools. Integrated seamlessly across Apple Silicon Macs, Writing Tools enables you to rewrite text into professional or friendly tones, proofread grammar and spelling with clear explanations, and generate summaries, tables, or bulleted lists across virtually any application where text can be entered.

What Are Apple Intelligence Writing Tools?

Writing Tools is not a standalone app or browser extension. Instead, it is embedded directly into macOS Sequoia’s core AppKit and text editing frameworks. It works natively in Apple apps like Pages, Mail, Notes, and Safari, as well as third-party applications like Microsoft Word, Slack, and Google Chrome.

The core features include:

• Proofread: Scans text for grammar mistakes, punctuation errors, and awkward phrasing. Unlike basic autocorrect, Writing Tools displays inline diffs explaining suggested corrections, allowing you to accept all changes or review them individually.
• Rewrite: Rephrases sentences to improve clarity and flow while preserving your original meaning.
• Tone Adjustment: Adjusts text to fit specific communication contexts:
  • Professional: Strengthens wording and elevates vocabulary for workplace correspondence.
  • Friendly: Warms up phrasing for personal messages and casual updates.
  • Concise: Trims redundant clauses and filler words to deliver punchy, direct statements.
• Summarise: Condenses long passages into concise executive summaries.
• Key Points: Extracts the primary actionable takeaways as a clean bulleted list.
• List & Table Formatting: Restructures unstructured paragraphs into organized numbered steps or formatted data tables.

System Requirements and Enabling Apple Intelligence on Mac

To access Writing Tools, your Mac must satisfy these hardware and software specifications:

• A Mac powered by an Apple Silicon chip (M1, M2, M3, M4, or later models).
• macOS Sequoia 15.1 or later installed.
• Apple Intelligence enabled in System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri.

How to Invoke and Use Writing Tools on macOS

You can summon Writing Tools anywhere you highlight editable text on your Mac:

1. Highlight the text you want to refine in your active document or email.
2. Right-click (or control-click) the highlighted text, navigate to Writing Tools in the contextual menu, and select your preferred action.
3. Alternatively, press the global keyboard shortcut: Shift + Command + W (or invoke the floating bar via the Edit menu).
4. A sleek, Apple Intelligence modal card will hover above your selection.

Rewriting and Fine-Tuning Text Tone

To rephrase an email draft or report section:

1. Select the text and open Writing Tools.
2. Click Rewrite for general stylistic improvements.
3. To enforce a specific style, select Professional, Friendly, or Concise.
4. Apple Intelligence will generate the rewritten draft. You can click Replace to apply the changes, Copy to place the result in your clipboard, or click the refresh arrow to generate an alternative variation.

Proofreading with Inline Explanation Diffs

When you select Proofread, Writing Tools does not blindly overwrite your prose. Instead:

1. It highlights corrected words with subtle colour tags.
2. Clicking on any highlighted tag reveals a popup explaining the grammatical rule or stylistic reason behind the change.
3. You can click the checkmark to accept individual suggestions, discard changes you disagree with, or click Use All to apply the complete set of refinements instantly.

Transforming Text into Summaries, Lists, and Tables

Writing Tools excels at restructuring dense text into digestible formats for readers:

• Summary: Highlight an article or multi-paragraph email and click Summary to generate a one-paragraph synopsis.
• Key Points: Highlights the essential arguments or action items into bullet points ready to paste into meeting notes.
• Table: Highlight unformatted lists of specs, dates, or product comparisons and choose Table. Writing Tools detects columns and headers automatically, generating a clean Markdown or rich text table.

Privacy and On-Device Processing

A fundamental benefit of Apple Intelligence Writing Tools is privacy. Standard editing, proofreading, and rewriting operations execute locally on the Apple Silicon Neural Engine without sending your private prose to remote cloud servers. For complex generative expansions that require Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, data is never stored on servers and remains cryptographically inaccessible to Apple.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do Writing Tools work inside web browsers like Chrome and Firefox?

Yes. Because Writing Tools hooks into macOS systemwide accessibility and text editing services, you can highlight text inside online CMS editors, email web apps, and web forms to invoke the tools via right-click or keyboard shortcut.

Can I use Writing Tools on read-only text?

Yes. If you highlight read-only text (such as a webpage in Safari or a PDF in Preview), you can use Writing Tools to generate a Summary, Key Points, or Table. The resulting output can be copied directly to your clipboard.

Does Writing Tools support languages other than English?

Initial releases support US, UK, Canadian, Australian, and other regional English dialects, with expanded multilingual support rolling out in subsequent macOS updates.