Whenever I click the Summarize button for a message or conversation in Mail on my M1 MacBook Air, Apple Intelligence displays progress for a second or two (the first few tries are much slower, as though some code is being loaded) and then says, “Unable to summarize these messages.”
I’ve tested with messages in my iCloud and Google accounts, and I’ve tried restarting, to no avail. Summarizing the same threads does work on my iPhone 16 Pro, so the basic functionality would seem to be present.
Are others seeing this too, or is it just me? And if it’s just me, any thoughts about how to troubleshoot further?
M2 MacBook Air - I get almost immediate results of “unable to summarize this message”. I haven’t found a single message that results in anything being summarized. However, in my in box view, there are many message previews with summaries (but, again, opening the message and hitting summarize results in “unable to…”).
I see both. I have some email that gets summarized just fine and others where it immediately says unable. I have not yet figured out what the distinguishing feature is.
I’d also prefer a KB shortcut or a toolbar icon to this iOS-esque having to swipe up to reveal a hidden button and then hit that button.
Yes, I should’ve said that the message list summaries seem to work fine—it is just the full message or conversation summary that doesn’t work. Interesting that it’s not working for you either.
I just summarized the email you sent that started this thread:
"Adam is experiencing issues with Apple Intelligence summarization in Mail on their M1 MacBook Air. The functionality works on their iPhone 16 Pro, and they are seeking feedback from others to troubleshoot the "
This is the one and only time I’ve tried summarize, but it worked and didn’t take long. Summaries in notifications have been working all along, although I can’t say they’re particularly accurate. M1 2020 MacBook Air running 15.1
Yeah, the inconsistent nature is odd. Still don’t understand what distinguishes emails where it works from those where it doesn’t. Different email providers and protocols, different email types and editors. No pattern clear yet to me.
The notification emails I get for this thread are all accurately summarized, apart perhaps from over-generalizing singular statements (“users think…” when actually only one user mentioned being of that opinion).
It has been working fine for me (MBP16 M3) for single messages (not a conversation). I tried it with a simple conversation - message from me and a reply - and got a pop-up saying it wasn’t designed for this kind of mail - but it did produce an (incomplete) summary,
Isn’t that the way AI works? The results you get depends on its knowledge database, so if it gets new information, you may get different results. It happens in spam filtering; an email that went through one day might not go through a few days later because the spam filter found malware or a spam keyword in another email.
Finally today summaries work - two or so weeks after installing 15.1?
It now seems to summarize all messages I tried, though occasionally I get a dialog box that says, “Summarize message? Mail Summarization isn’t designed to work with this type of content. The summary may not fully reflect the original message.”
Turning Apple Intelligence off and back on, with a restart in the middle
Clearing space to ensure I had at least 70 GB of free space (some random comment elsewhere suggested that)
Upgrading to the latest macOS 15.2 beta
I’m at a loss, and unless anyone can think of anything else to try, I’m planning to call Apple Support once I can upgrade to the official 15.2 release.
I’m also using an M1 MacBook Air, but I haven’t seen the issues you’re seeing.
One thing that comes to mind that is not in your list is clearing system caches. It’s something of a shot in the dark. I use Onyx for that if it becomes necessary. There’s probably a terminal command for that, too.
Here is the summary produced by Apple Mail for me:
Users report inconsistent results with Apple Intelligence summarization in Mail on the Mac. Some users experience successful summarization, while others encounter errors or no summaries at all. Despite trying various solutions, Adam Engst remains unable to get summarization to work in Mail, Safari, or Notes.
I’ve only used it for messages (not conversations) and have been very happy with the result (on an iPad Pro 11” 2nd gen). It has saved me a lot of time as I triage E-mail.
Summarize seems to be working for me… except it frequently shows a “This message is too short to summarize.” message after trying to summarize.
Why the heck bother to show me a “Summarize” option when the message is too short? How hard would it be to put in an “if messageLength < 100 dontShowSummarize” line of code?
I have found Summarize very useful for long articles on the web. Not as useful for Messages/Texts or Notifications. Usually there the summary is too short nd just wastes time as I have to listen to both the summary and the full message. Though it is nice for things like texted appointment reminders, which often have gobs of superlative text about privacy or whatnot and Summary reduces it all to “Your dentist appoint is Tuesday at 10 a.m.”
