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As with virtually all tech companies these days, Apple has jumped into the AI race with its own Apple Intelligence, with features like AI-powered summaries that can condense a lengthy block of text in seconds. But your Mac can already do that without AI.
With Summarize, an often forgotten 20-year-old tool that's built into your Mac, you can easily highlight long web articles, PDFs or huge chunks of text and get a quick summary of what's important. Get this: it's actually faster than AI, and you can even adjust the size of the summary in real time using a slider.
How to turn on Summarize on Mac
The built-in Summarize tool on Mac, whether it's a MacBook or Mac mini, is a great way to break down those huge walls of words in documents or articles into sentences or paragraphs, and it's even able to pick up the most relevant information.
Instead of generative AI-based summarization, it analyzes text and removes filler and non-essential info to shorten whatever is highlighted, prioritizing key sentences. This means you'll get a shortened version of exactly what is written, which is great if you're looking for key parts in a long passage of text.
It's been on Mac for years, but it's turned off by default. However, once you turn it on, you can get a quick summary of whatever length in just two clicks. Follow the steps below to get it set up.
1. Head into System Settings
On your Mac, click on the Apple logo on the top-right corner of your screen, then select System Settings. In the left-hand sidebar, scroll down to Keyboard and click on it. In this menu, select Keyboard Shortcuts.
2. Access Services
A new window will pop up. Scroll down the left hand sidebar and click Services. From here, you'll see many dropdown menus. Click on the arrow next to Text to drop the menu for more options.
3. Enable Summarize
Now we just need to turn on the tool. As the bottom, you'll find Summarize. Click the box to enable it, and you're ready to roll. You can also add a keyboard shortcut so you can quickly access the feature whenever you want to summarize highlighted text, but it's also easy to do this just by right clicking.
4. Get Summarize-ing!
Highlight the text you want summarized and right-click (or use two fingers on your trackpad). Click on Services at the bottom, then select Summarize. From here, the Summary window will appear, where you can adjust the length of a summary.
How to use Summarize on Mac
Once you've got it working, you can choose whatever text you like to instantly get a shorter version and quickly get the key points. Even better, thanks to the Summary Size slider, you can choose just how long this summary will be.
For example, if I just wanted a "SparkNotes" of sorts version of an article or document, I can put the slider to 10% to get a couple of paragraphs on the most important parts of a piece. If I need more detail, I can simply slide it further up the scale, which will add more paragraphs to offer more context. It goes all the way to 100%, which defeats the purpose of Summarize, but whatever output you need, it offers the full scale.
There are also two options to choose from: Sentences and Paragraphs. I found the latter to be less effective, as it will remove whole chunks of paragraphs that may have relevant sentences within them. Stick with Sentences to get finer details.
As I touched on, you'll find word-for-word summaries of highlighted text, as opposed to newly formed information that AI summaries offer. That's good if you're looking for exactly what an article has stated, but it can also get confusing when whole sentences or paragraphs are skipped, as there's sometimes not enough meaning to fill in the gaps.
Look, AI summaries are still a handy tool to have, and they can do a great job at quickly nailing down important points in an email, document and more. But sometimes, they can be unreliable, and that's when the Summarize tool on Mac can come in handy. It's instant, can work offline and doesn't send any data to the cloud, since it's done locally.
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