From Friendly to Professional: The Power of iOS Writing Tools

In this episode, Thomas Domville demonstrates how to use Writing Tools in iOS 18.1. Writing Tools, released as part of the first set of Apple Intelligence features in iOS 18.1 is an impressive feature that allows users to rewrite text in different tones, such as friendly, professional, and concise, with an added proofread option.

To use this feature, open the text you want to edit and highlight it. Within the Edit section of your Rotor, you'll find the Writing Tools option. Different tone options will appear for you to choose from. Select the desired tone, and iOS will automatically adjust the text accordingly. If you opt for the proofread option, it will check for grammatical and stylistic errors, providing suggestions for improvement. This feature makes it easier to tailor your writing for different contexts and ensure it's polished and effective.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by Aiko, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Hello and welcome.

My name is Thomas Domville, also known as AnonyMouse.

I'm going to be talking to you about an Apple Intelligent feature called the writing tools.

Now this is one of my most favorite feature of the Apple Intelligent that Apple has to offer.

Now in order to be able to use the Apple Intelligent, you must need the following iPhone criteria, which is iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or newer devices.

If you have those devices, then you will earn luck.

The first thing we need to do is make sure that Apple Intelligent is turned on.

Simple enough to turn it on, you'll have to head over to your settings.

So let's head over to settings, and let's do one finger double tap and open this.

And now what we're looking for, we're looking for Apple Intelligent in Siri, so swipe to the right until you find that button.

One finger double tap, open that.

Now you may have heard the word beta.

Well, at this time of the podcast that's being recorded, it is in beta.

So Apple Intelligent is in beta at this moment.

Now if you don't hear the beta, don't worry.

That might mean that the beta is no longer in beta.

So to make sure we are in the same place in this right area, let's go to the very top left hand corner where you have the back button.

To get to there, you can either tap at the top left or use a forefinger tap on the top half of your device until you hear the back button.

Now if you swipe to the right, that's where you heard the beta.

Now in your case, if you don't hear the beta, have no worries, let's keep going to the right.

Now we're into the Apple Intelligent section.

Now if you go to the right here, a personal intelligence system integrated deeply into your iPhone apps and Siri, learn more link, use the rotor to access links.

You can do that if you wish.

If you want to find more information about the Apple Intelligent and all the features that has to offer, double tap that and I'll take you to the web page at Apple to talk to you about more about Apple Intelligent.

But what we're looking for is the option to turn the Apple Intelligent on and that should be the next item up.

If you go to the right, and that's where you turn it on.

So in your case it's probably turned off and by default it is turned off.

That is something you have to opt in and turn on yourself.

If you want to use Apple Intelligent or your device, double tap that.

Now you may get a prompt to let you know that you are now put into the waiting list.

The waiting list, what that means is during the beta process is that instead of everybody pouring into the Apple Intelligent all at once and overloading their server, they are waiting to have to put you on a waiting list until they have enough server and enough load for all of us to be in it.

So you may have to be put on a waiting list before you are able to have that Apple Intelligent turned on.

Once you're off the waiting list, then this option should be turned on.

Now that's on, the cool thing about the writing tools and explaining a little bit more about the writing tools is that it allows you to take a set of text that you have written or dictated or whatever that may be and allow you to rewrite it by using AI tools.

You can proofread it for grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and you can also rewrite it to different tones.

So it has this AI capability to help you correct and give your writing or dictation a little bit of flair.

So let's go ahead and use this as an example.

Any text field, this will work.

So in other words, it will work in mail, it will work in messages, if you have WhatsApp and you're wanting to send text, anything that has a text field, that's where you can find the writing tools.

Now in my case, I'm just going to stick with the mail area, but messages will definitely come in handy because I use dictation a lot.

You know how Siri bushes your words and stuff?

The writing tools come to the rescue and make each and every one of my messages look great.

So I'm going to go back to the home screen, I'm going to find my mail app here, I'm going to go ahead and open up mail, and I'm going to find the compose button.

So I'm going to compose a mail, for example.

So I'm going to double tap on compose, I'm going to go to the edit field where the messages that I'm going to be sending.

So it's right dead center, which you always get.

So that's the typical templates, double tap that, now I'm in this field.

So I'm going to go ahead and erase everything out of here to do this easily.

I like to go use my rotor and try to find edit, swipe down, double tap that, obviously I could erase that from the template if I wanted to, but I have something I have written up, so I'm going to go ahead and paste it here.

So I'm going to go back to the home screen, I'm going to go to the edit, swipe down, double tap that, I'm going to go ahead and erase that from the template if I wanted to, but I have something I have written up, so I'm going to go ahead and do this easily.

So I'm going to go ahead and go ahead and erase that from the template if I wanted to, but I have something I have written up, so I'm going to go ahead and do this easily.

Alright, so there's the message that I have typed up, so we're just using this as an example.

You remember when you use a rotor to go to the edit, guess what, you'll have to go back to the edit, that's where the writing tools live.

So let's go back to edit, I'm going to swipe down, voila, there's the writing tools.

Double tap on that, okay, now the formatting of the interface is not really fantastic.

For those that like to be touchy and like to touch explore, you're going to find this really confusing very quickly.

So I'll do my best to explain what's going on here.

So essentially the writing tools pops up in the bottom one third of your screen, even though it feels like it's at the very top, it's not.

So if you touch around the screen, you're going to notice this is really weird, there's the messages and stuff, where's the writing tool?

Well, it's at the bottom one third of the screen.

To make things a little bit easier for you, I'm going to recommend do a forefinger tap at the top half of your screen.

I know that doesn't make any sense, you think that goes to the top left of the screen and you'll get the areas that you just saw in touch, nope, it will just take focus of the writing tool itself.

Sheet grabber, button, double tap to expand the sheet.

You know you're in the right area when you hear the sheet grabber.

So let's go to the right and show you all the function and feature you can do with the writing tools.

Writing tools, heading, close, button.

There's your close button, if you want to get out of it.

Proofread, button.

There's the proofreading.

We're going to be getting back to that.

That's a great way of keeping your writing to your liking, to sounds more like you, but yeah, it's kind of like a Grammarly check, so it's checking for spelling, grammar and punctuation and allows you to update those corrections on the fly for you.

Keep going to the right.

Rewrite, button.

You got the rewrite.

This is where AI comes in to shine most of all.

This allows you to rewrite what you've just written, but keep it at the tone that you have it.

Now there's different types of tone you can select from as well besides the rewrite.

Friendly, button.

Of course, if you want the friendly kind of rewrite, you have those options of friendly, professional, button, concise, button.

Professional and concise.

So obviously, that's pretty self-explanatory from friendly, professional, concise, concise.

It's just kind of shorten things, make things short and sweet, take out unnecessary words where professional makes it more sounding like a professional tone.

And then of course, friendly is being friendly.

Now there are more options here.

If you go to the right, summary, button.

Now I'll be getting to this area last, but I will show you all the options you have.

You have your summary, which summarize what you've just written.

So if you have a message from someone or you wrote a really long message yourself, you want to just kind of give you a brief summary of what that is, just kind of give you the meet and greet of that, what you've just written up or what they've written up.

That's what the summary is for, so you can summarize that message.

This is pretty self-explanatory.

The key points and list gives you the bullet points of the most important part of the writing that you've just written or that you're trying to use the writing tools on.

Table of content.

Yes, you can create a table of content based on what you've written.

And then lastly, we have cancel, which is eliminate the whole thing.

Let's not do that.

Let's go back to the top here.

Sheet grabber, button.

Where we found the sheet grabber.

Double tap to expand the sheet.

We'll go to the right until we get to proofreading.

Writing tools, heading, close, button.

Proofread, button.

Let's go ahead and go in here and double tap here and see what we got.

No recommended changes, heading, message content, message body, text field, is editing, here it is.

Okay, so it says no correction at the time.

That's because AI is running.

So that's kind of misleading.

You just got to let it go for a few seconds.

That's where it goes and starts to hit that processor and find what you got.

So I'm going to do the same thing.

I'm going to go to the top half here with four fingers.

Sheet grabber, button.

And now go to the right.

Double tap, revert, button.

We have the revert button.

If you feel that I don't want to do this, I want to revert all the changes I've made at this point, go back to the original statement.

Now we haven't even really got to the proofread.

So let's go to the right.

Proofread, heading, accept all recommended changes, button.

Now this is where comes kind of a shortfall at this time of podcast.

Doesn't mean it's not going to change in the future.

I hope it does.

I hope they enhance this some more.

The only two options you have is to correct it all at once, which is you've got the button.

So if you don't want to go through it, you trust what they're doing, double tap that and I'll correct everything for you on the fly.

However, if you go to the right.

Three changes.

You're going to hear that there were three changes to what I wrote.

Go to the right, show original text, button.

Go to the right, show previous change button and go to the right, show next change button.

You can go through each of those items and I'll tell you exactly what's wrong with that writing.

So if I double tap it, next correction and let's take a look at what it says here.

Now you have two options to see this.

Now this is where I don't like it, but you either have to tap the top half and keep going to the right until you find the changes or you get used to where that lower one third of the section and kind of get to it directly.

Use original button.

Or you can hear it use original, which means do you want it to use the original?

If you like what that correction does, we don't want to keep the original, but if it's made a mistake, you just double tap that and that will keep that first of three correction in place.

That is the problem.

Let's go to the right.

Missing punctuation.

All right.

So that makes sense.

That makes sense.

And so there's probably some punctuation that I could have used comma and what or not, maybe I forgot some pairs.

That is what the this particular correction is wanting to do.

So those two options either keep the original or go to the next one.

The punctuation should be inserted here.

Show original text button, show previous change button, show next change button.

Let's go see the next one.

Use original button.

Back to your original.

Missing punctuation.

All right.

So I have an another punctuation area.

The punctuation should be inserted here.

So again, do you want to keep that or say, no, I don't really want a punctuation there.

Go to the next one.

So go to the last correction that is going to show me.

Show original text button.

Show previous change button.

Show next change button.

And let's see what this one has to say.

Use original button.

Use original once again.

Phrase usage.

The word proofreading should be used instead of the phrase proofreading here.

All right.

So I think what I did, I had a space in there and so that is obviously wrong.

So I would want to keep that.

Otherwise, if you feel like that's right, use the original.

Otherwise, if you are happy with all these things, sheet grabber button, now go to the bright revert button where you found the reverse.

So I want to revert and not make any changes.

Double tap that.

And now let's go back to the top sheet grabber button and go to the right double writing tools heading close button proofread button where we had the proofread button.

All right.

So that's how you use the proofreading.

Let's go to the right rewrite button.

Let's see what some of this rewrite does exactly.

So I'm going to go ahead and double tap rewrite show original text button.

Now this is where it comes and it gets kind of frustrating as well.

Hopefully they'll make them correction to this.

But for now, if you recall, remember I told you just go to the top half, right?

Sheet grabber button.

You could do that.

However, if you want to see the results of what it just did, how unfortunately you're going to have to do a touch explorer on this part.

So swipe to the right, you're not going to find this particular field.

And it's right in about halfway down.

You just tap on that area and that is what it rewrote.

So let's see what it rewrote just using the rewrite tone.

Message content, message body, text field is editing.

Here's an example of how to use the Apple intelligence writing tools in action.

The rewrite feature maintains the original tone of the message and offers options to make it friendly, professional and concise.

Additionally, you can use the proofreading option to receive suggestions for spelling and grammar improvements that can enhance your message selected character mode.

Use the rotor to access misspelled words.

Pretty cool.

Right?

That sounds pretty darn good.

I like that.

However, we're not going to say I'm going to keep it.

But if you do like it, go to the top, sheet grabber button, double tap to expand the sheet and go right.

Revert button.

You have the option to revert it.

If you don't like that, go to the right.

Rewrite heading.

Done.

Button.

Until you get to the done button.

If you tap done, that will take that rewrite and replace what you written for what it suggested during the rewrite option here.

Now, you heard the revert button, right?

If you do not like what you just did, there's two things you can do.

Show original text button.

Rewrite button.

You keep going to the right and you have the rewrite button.

If you double tap that again, it'll rewrite it again by using that rewrite tone, meaning that it'll just change a few words here and there until something that you like.

I like that better.

So you can keep tapping on the rewrite until you get to what you like and what is done with your text.

Now, let's go to revert.

I'm going to show you the friendly one version of the tone.

So once again, you know the routine.

Top half.

Sheet grabber button.

Double tap to collapse the sheet.

Let's go to the right until you find the revert button.

Revert button.

Double tap that.

And now we're back to the screen where you tap it towards the top half of your screen.

Sheet grabber button.

And now we're going to swipe to the right until you find the friendly.

Writing tools.

Heading.

Close.

Button.

Proofread.

Button.

Rewrite.

Button.

Friendly.

Button.

Double tap that.

Show original text.

Dimmed.

Let's center here so you can hear what it sounds in a friendly tone.

Check out how the Apple intelligence writing tools work in action.

The rewrite feature keeps the original tone and lets you choose friendly, professional or concise.

Plus, you can use the proofreading option for spelling and grammar tips to make your message even better.

Selected.

Character mode.

Oh, so that's a friendly tone.

Let's try the professional.

So the same thing.

We got to revert it.

So I'm going to go back to the top here.

Sheet grabber.

Button.

Double tap to expand the sheet.

Go to the right.

Revert.

Button.

Double tap to revert.

And once again, we go to the top and then swipe to the right until you find professional.

Friendly.

Button.

Professional.

Button.

Show original text.

Dimmed.

Let's see what it says now.

Message content.

Message body.

Text field.

Is editing.

Here is an example of utilizing the Apple intelligence writing tools in action.

The rewrite feature maintains the original tone of the message while offering options to enhance its friendliness, professionalism, and conciseness.

Additionally, the proofreading feature provides valuable suggestions for spelling and grammar, enabling users to refine their content.

Selected.

Character mode.

Pretty wordy, right?

But professional, right?

So that's your professional tone.

Let's go to the last tone and that is concise.

So go top half again.

Sheet grabber.

Button.

Then swipe to the right to revert.

Revert.

Button.

Double tap that.

And once again, go through the routine again and find concise.

Professional.

Concise.

Button.

Double tap.

Show original text.

Button.

And let's see what the result is.

Message content.

Message body.

Text field.

Is editing.

Here's an example of using Apple's intelligence writing tools.

The rewrite feature maintains the original tone and offers options for friendliness, minimalism, and conciseness.

Additionally, the proofreading option provides advice for spelling and grammar.

Enhancing the message.

Selected.

Character mode.

Use the rotor to access.

Well, that's concise.

So it took out some words and kind of shortened things up to make it short, to the point, and sweet.

So those are the different types of rewriting tools for the tone that you are trying to emphasize or to get at.

This is absolutely gorgeous.

I absolutely love this.

Now one last thing I want to show you, let's go back to the top half here.

Sheet grabber.

Button.

Where we found the sheet grabber, go to the right to find revert.

Revert.

Button.

And double tap on revert.

Now let's go to outside the writing tools where I kind of briefly mentioned about summary.

So let's go down to we found summary.

Summary.

Button.

Now I briefly mentioned what each of these items are.

There's a key point, there's lists, there's table content, and et cetera.

Whatever options you want.

So if you are wanting to use one of these, go ahead and hit one of those, whichever you want.

So if you want a summary of what you just written, you hear the copy button.

Now at the time of the recording, unfortunately, the voiceover is unable to hear what it summarized.

Now typically if you go to the right, you'll get to the summarize section, what it just summarized.

Now it's not going to replace your text when you use these options.

It's only going to replace if you use the proofread area and changes, and then the rewriting tones area.

The summary, key notes, key points, lists, table contents, et cetera.

That's where it's going to come up with a screen where you are able to read it yourself.

If you really want to keep that, what you have to do, you'll have to use the copy button.

So let's find that copy button once again.

So I'm going to do my handy dandy.

Go to the top left hand corner or forward finger tap the top half, where you find that reliable sheet grabber.

You're just going to simply swipe to the right until you find the copy button.

Double tap that.

Now it has been copied.

And from here, you would be able to send it to any other text field that you want, whether that's in notes or back into mail and wherever there might be a text field for you to paste that result.

And you'll be able to see that summary list key point where you'll see the summary results.

The other thing I want to point out to you as well is that that is how you rewrite the entire paragraph is by selecting the entire text.

If you want, you can use the text selection or just go by word by word and perform a one finger double tap and hold or a one finger triple tap.

And that will present a option of where you can go to the right and select writing tools as well.

And not only that, but text selection, you can kind of define if you just wanted to rewrite a sentence or a paragraph or whatever, not the entire thing.

You'll have to use the text selection and highlight or select those texts that you want to perform the writing tools on.

Now, before I head out of here, I want to show you how to take something that you want.

So in this example, since we did a copy of the summary, I want to go back in and rewrite that to the normal rewrite.

So we did the friendly, professional and concise.

I want to go back in and actually take that.

So this is how you would do that.

So you just go to the edit once again, misspelled words, edit, swipe down, writing tools, double tap rewriting tools, message content, message.

And if you recall, you go back to the rewrite button.

That's the one I want to use or you can use friendly, professional or concise rewrite button.

That's the one I want to use.

So double tap that show original text dimmed button.

Here's an example of how to use the Apple intelligence writing tools in action.

The rewrite feature maintains the original tone of the message and offers options to make it friendly, professional and concise.

Additionally, you can use the proofreading option to receive suggestions for spelling and grammar improvements that can enhance your message selected.

So that is what I want to choose.

So to take that or to accept that you have to go back to the top sheet, grab her button, double tap to expand the sheet.

We're going to swipe to the right until we find the done button, revert button rewrite heading done button.

Once you find the done button, double tap done message content, message body text field is editing.

Here's an example of how to use the Apple intelligence writing tools in action.

The rewrite feature maintains the original tone of the message and offers options to make it friendly, professional and concise.

Additionally, you can use the proofreading option to receive suggestions for spelling and grammar improvements that can enhance your message selected character mode.

Use the rotor to access misspelled words.

And that is what I'm talking about, my friend.

This just adds more flair to the writing with an assistant of AI.

So that is all about the new Apple intelligence writing tools, which is one of my most favorite AI feature they have available for iOS.

My name is Thomas Domville, also known as AnonyMouse.

Until next time.

Bye bye.

Bye. you