How to summarize iMessage threads on a Mac

On a Mac with Apple Intelligence, Messages already summarizes your unread iMessages: each conversation in the sidebar shows a short summary of what you haven’t read, and you turn it on or off in Messages > Settings > General > Summarize messages. What Apple doesn’t do, as of 20 October 2026, is summarize a whole thread or answer questions about one. For that you need ChatGPT’s Apple Messages plugin, an export you give to an AI, or an inbox app that can summarize any conversation.

This guide covers Apple’s two built-in summaries (in Messages and in notifications), then three ways to summarize an entire iMessage thread on a Mac, with what each one sends where.

Which Macs can summarize messages?

You need a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later) and Apple Intelligence turned on, with your Mac and Siri set to a supported language. On macOS 27, Apple lists 16 languages: English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese and Korean (Apple Support). Apple Intelligence doesn’t work on devices bought in mainland China, and Apple says some features aren’t available in every region. Plan for up to 8 GB of free storage, or up to 14 GB on Macs with M3 or later and at least 12 GB of memory.

Built-in option 1: Summaries in the Messages sidebar

Once Apple Intelligence is on, Messages replaces the preview under each conversation with a summary of its unread messages, marked with a small Summary icon (Apple’s Messages guide).

To turn it on or off:

1. Open Messages.
2. Choose Messages > Settings.
3. Click General.
4. Select or deselect Summarize messages.

Useful companions in the same app:

• View > Unread Messages shows only conversations with unread messages.
• Select an unread conversation and click the Go Up button to jump to the first unread message.
• Conversation > Mark as Read clears one you’ve dealt with.

Limits. The summary covers only unread messages and is a line or two long. You can’t ask it a follow-up question, and once you open the conversation and read it, the summary is gone. Like any AI summary, it can miss sarcasm or context, so check anything important against the actual messages.

Built-in option 2: Notification summaries

If you mostly see iMessages as notifications, Apple can condense a stack of alerts from a busy group into one summary.

1. Open System Settings and click Notifications.
2. Click Summarize notifications and turn Summarize Notifications on, then choose which apps to include.
3. To change one app later, click it under Application Notifications and switch Summarize notifications on or off (Apple Support).

The Reduce Interruptions Focus in the same settings goes a step further and only lets through notifications that may need your attention now.

Privacy for both built-in options. Apple says many Apple Intelligence requests run entirely on your Mac. More complex ones go to Private Cloud Compute, where Apple says data “is not stored or made accessible to Apple” and results aren’t kept (Apple Support). You can export an Apple Intelligence Report of those requests from Privacy & Security settings.

How to summarize a whole iMessage thread

For anything more than “what’s unread,” you need a tool that can read the conversation’s history. All three options below read the messages stored on your Mac, so first make sure your Mac has the history you want.

Get your full history onto the Mac. In Messages, choose Messages > Settings, click iMessage and select Enable Messages in iCloud, using the same Apple Account as your iPhone (Apple Support). Messages stored in iCloud then become available on the Mac. If a thread is missing older messages, this is usually why.

Option A: ChatGPT’s Apple Messages plugin

Since 20 August 2026, the ChatGPT app for Mac can read and search your Messages chats and prepare messages, in its Work and Codex modes (not regular chats), on Apple silicon Macs and on every ChatGPT plan, 9to5Mac reported from OpenAI’s release notes (9to5Mac). Once it’s set up and you’ve granted the permissions it asks for, you can ask it to read a conversation with a named contact and summarize it. It only sends a message after you approve the text and the recipients, unless you turn that confirmation off for a conversation.

What it covers: iMessage, SMS and RCS. Where your messages go: the conversation it works on is processed by OpenAI’s models. If you use Codex on a personal plan, the Improve the model for everyone setting decides whether those tasks can be used for training (OpenAI Help Center). Our guide to using ChatGPT with iMessage on a Mac covers setup and limits in detail.

Option B: Export the conversation and give it to any AI

Messages doesn’t have an export button, but the free, open-source imessage-exporter can save conversations as text or HTML files. It runs in Terminal, and the Terminal app needs Full Disk Access (System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access) because macOS protects the Messages database. This route suits people comfortable with the command line.

Once you have a text file, delete anything you don’t want to share and upload it to ChatGPT or Claude with a prompt like:

This is an exported iMessage conversation between me and [name].
Summarize it in under 150 words, then list:
1. Plans we made and whether each has a date
2. Questions either of us asked that never got an answer
3. Anything I promised to do
Quote the message when you're unsure.

Where your messages go: to OpenAI or Anthropic, under your account’s training settings. Our guide to asking ChatGPT or Claude to analyze your texts lists what to remove before you upload. Remove Full Disk Access from Terminal afterwards if you don’t need it.

Option C: An inbox app that summarizes any thread

Tera Chat is our app, so weigh this accordingly. It’s a free Mac app that brings iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram and Tinder into one inbox, and it can summarize any conversation in it, group chats included. Its summary covers the latest messages, up to the last 100, so for the full history of a long thread, Option B is more complete.

1. Give Tera Chat Full Disk Access in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access, then quit and reopen it. macOS keeps your iMessage history in a protected database on your Mac, and this lets Tera Chat read it locally. It’s optional: skip it if you don’t need iMessage, and you can revoke it any time. Full Disk Access, explained covers what this permission allows.
2. Open any iMessage thread and press ⇧⌘S to Summarize it.
3. Use Ask about this chat for specific questions: “What restaurant did she mention?” or “Did they ever mention their birthday?” In the app’s words, answers “are grounded in the last 50 messages + known facts” (what Tera Chat has learned about the person).

The same keystroke works on WhatsApp, Telegram and Instagram threads in the same window.

Where your messages go: they stay on your Mac and are never uploaded to a Tera Chat server. The text being summarized goes to the AI you choose: your own ChatGPT account through OpenAI’s Codex app, your own Claude or Grok API key, or a Tera Chat AI plan (Anthropic’s Claude, through Tera Chat’s server, which doesn’t keep it). Once AI is set up, some features run in the background, such as a summary after every 10 new messages; you can pause that in Settings → Pipelines.

Limits: it needs macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon. Contacts show as phone numbers or email addresses unless Tera Chat also has access to your Contacts. In a group chat, the AI is told which messages are yours but not which member sent each of the others. It’s free with your ChatGPT account (through Codex) or a Claude or Grok API key; AI Plus is $9.99/month or $99.99/year (cancel anytime).

Apple summaries vs full-thread summaries

	Messages sidebar summaries	Notification summaries	ChatGPT Messages plugin	Export + AI	Tera Chat
What it summarizes	Unread messages per conversation	Stacks of notifications	Any conversation you ask about	Whatever you export	The last 100 messages of any synced conversation
Ask follow-up questions	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Other apps	No	Any app’s notifications	iMessage, SMS, RCS only	Any chat you can export	WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram
Setup	A checkbox	A setting	ChatGPT app plus Mac permissions	Terminal plus Full Disk Access	Full Disk Access
Where the text is processed	On the Mac or Private Cloud Compute	On the Mac or Private Cloud Compute	OpenAI	OpenAI or Anthropic	The AI provider you choose
Cost	Free	Free	Included in ChatGPT plans	Free tools	Free with ChatGPT (through Codex) or a Claude or Grok API key; AI Plus $9.99/month

Which should you use?

If you just want to know what’s waiting in each conversation, Apple’s sidebar summaries are free, private by design and already on your Mac; turn them on and you’re done. If you need to understand a long thread (a group planning a trip, a family logistics chat, a conversation you dropped weeks ago), use a full-thread method. ChatGPT’s plugin is the simplest if you already use ChatGPT’s Mac app and only care about iMessage. If you also read WhatsApp, Telegram or Instagram on your Mac, an inbox that summarizes all of them avoids learning a different tool for each.

Apple is also bringing personalized reply suggestions to Messages; our tracker for Apple’s Personalized Smart Reply follows when they arrive and in which languages. For the privacy trade-offs across every approach, read is it safe to let AI read your messages?, and for drafting replies after you’ve caught up, see AI that replies to texts in your style.