Does iPhone have a tone checker built in? Writing Tools rewrites but never says how it reads

No. An iPhone does not have a tone checker built in, if by that you mean something that reads the text you are about to send and tells you how it will come across to the person receiving it. What recent models have is Apple Intelligence Writing Tools, which proofreads your text, rewrites it, and shifts it towards Friendly, Professional or Concise on request¹. That makes it a rewriter. It changes your words and says nothing about how they read. The closest thing, Siri AI in beta, answers only when you ask, and I cover it below.

The difference shows up when you are about to send something. Writing Tools answers the request “make this friendlier”. None of the Writing Tools options Apple documents answers “is this friendly enough”, because none of them reports how the draft reads to anyone or points at the sentence doing the damage. If you already know what is wrong with your message, Apple’s tool is good and already on the phone. If you do not know, and the email experiments by Kruger and colleagues, covered below, suggest a sender can miss it, you need a tool that reads the draft first.

I compared Apple’s tool with Grammarly, ChatGPT and the rest in Subtext vs Apple Writing Tools, Grammarly and ChatGPT. This piece stays on the iPhone question, and Subtext, the app I co-founded, comes in near the end.

What Writing Tools does in Messages

Writing Tools is Apple’s name for the text features inside Apple Intelligence, and it works in most places you can type, including Messages and apps from other developers¹. Apple’s iPhone User Guide lists the options: Proofread, Rewrite with a choice of Friendly, Professional or Concise, Summarize and Key Points, and a “Describe a change” box where you type the change you want in your own words¹. For Messages specifically, Apple’s support page says you can “proofread, rewrite, summarize, or change the tone of text” on Apple Intelligence devices running iOS 18.1 or later².

Proofread checks grammar, word choice and sentence structure and shows its changes with explanations, according to Apple’s launch announcement³. Rewrite gives you a different version of what you wrote and lets you pick the tone preset³. The describe box arrived with iOS 18.2 and is the most flexible part of the tool, since you type the instruction in your own words⁴, and “make this less blunt” is the kind of request it is for, though I have not tested that phrase. A Compose option lets ChatGPT write text from scratch inside Writing Tools, and Apple notes on the same page that what you type there goes to ChatGPT¹.

What the list does not contain is a reading. There is no option that returns “this will read as cold” or “the second sentence sounds like an ultimatum”. Every option takes your text as input and returns changed text, or a summary of it. You decide what needs changing, and you are the one who has to notice that anything does. Apple’s own iOS 27 guide files feedback on your writing under a different feature, Siri AI, which I come to below¹.

Which iPhones and languages support Writing Tools?

Apple Intelligence runs on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone Air and every iPhone 16 model or later, according to Apple’s requirements page⁵. A standard iPhone 15, an iPhone 14 or anything older is not on that list.

The language list grew in steps, each dated by Apple itself. Writing Tools launched on 28 October 2024 with iOS 18.1, in US English only, with the device and Siri language both set to it³. iOS 18.2, on 11 December 2024, added localised English for Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK⁴. iOS 18.4, on 31 March 2025, added French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Chinese (simplified), plus English for Singapore and India, and brought Apple Intelligence to iPhone and iPad users in the EU for the first time⁶. Apple’s current page, dated 14 September 2026, lists 16 languages with iOS 27: English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Japanese and Korean⁵. Comparing that list with the March 2025 one gives seven languages added since: Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese and Chinese (traditional). Apple’s pages I checked do not date each of those seven.

Two limits remain. Apple Intelligence does not work on devices bought in mainland China, or in mainland China on a device bought elsewhere when the Apple Account region is also China⁵. And Apple’s footnote says some features that run on its servers carry daily usage limits, with “expanded access to such features” to be sold “for a fee in the future”¹. Apple’s list is open ended, “including but not limited to” four named features, and Writing Tools is not one of them, so I am not assuming either way.

How to use Writing Tools in Messages, step by step

Apple’s instructions are short, and I have kept to them.

1. Check that your iPhone is a supported model, is running iOS 18.1 or later, and has Apple Intelligence turned on with the device and Siri language set to the same supported language²⁵.
2. In Messages, type your text, then select it. Apple’s Messages page says to highlight the text, tap the Forward button, then tap Writing Tools². The iOS 27 User Guide describes the same action as selecting the text and tapping the Writing Tools button¹.
3. Choose an option. Tap Proofread for grammar, word choice and sentence structure³, Rewrite for a new version, or Friendly, Professional or Concise under Rewrite for a tone¹.
4. For anything else, tap “Describe a change” and type what you want, in plain words¹.
5. Read the result, then tap Done¹.

Three things in these steps matter for tone. You have to decide to open Writing Tools for a rewrite. Nothing prompts you. Apple’s iOS 27 feature list does add automatic proofreading⁵, and Apple says Apple Intelligence “automatically proofreads for users as they type across the system”⁷, but neither page describes it judging tone. You have to pick a direction, and Friendly, Professional and Concise name where the text should end up, and none of them says what is wrong with it. And the result replaces what you wrote, so comparing the two versions and working out why one is better is left to you.

A rewriter and a tone checker are different tools

A tone checker, which is what Subtext is, reads a draft as a message someone is about to receive and reports how it is likely to land, before you send it. A rewriter takes a draft and returns a changed one. Writing Tools is the second kind, like other AI message rewriters, and whether those rewriters actually work is a separate research question. The first kind exists because senders can misjudge their own tone, as the paper below shows.

Kruger, Epley, Parker and Ng published five experiments in 2005 under the title “Egocentrism over e-mail: Can we communicate as well as we think?”⁸. Studies 1 and 2 used 12 and 60 students at Cornell University, Study 3 used 154 pairs of University of Illinois students, and Studies 4 and 5 used 54 and 58 Illinois students, with support from a University of Illinois Board of Trustees grant and a US National Science Foundation grant⁸. Their abstract states that without gesture, emphasis and intonation it is hard to convey emotion and tone over email, that people “tend to believe that they can communicate over e-mail more effectively than they actually can”, and that the overconfidence comes from egocentrism, “the inherent difficulty of detaching oneself from one’s own perspective”. Because a writer hears a sentence differently depending on whether they meant it to be sarcastic or funny, they struggle to see that the reader may not⁸. I go through three of the five studies, with the figures labelled, in Does this text sound rude?.

A 2025 study of real messages found no sign of misread positive or negative tone

A 2025 paper by Pollmann and Roos compared what senders intended with how receivers rated the tone of everyday messages between people who knew each other. One study used text messages (347 receivers and 171 senders) and the other used work or education emails (361 receivers and 61 senders)⁹. In both they report “no indication for misunderstanding”, because sender and receiver ratings lined up closely⁹. The abstract describes ratings of a message’s valence, positive or negative, and does not mention sarcasm or ambiguity. I read it as a counterweight to Kruger and cannot say that most messages get misread.

Writing Tools makes you the judge of what is wrong and leaves the tool to carry out the fix. In Kruger’s lab tasks the writer, acting as judge, tended to hear the tone they meant and miss the one on the page, while Pollmann and Roos found no sign of misread positive or negative tone in everyday messages. Neither study can tell you which of the two your next draft will be. A tone checker is a second reader standing in for the recipient, and only some tone checkers read a draft before rewriting it. AI is better at predicting how a message might come across than at knowing what the writer feels, and I set out the accuracy figures in AI tone detection: what it can and cannot read.

Siri AI answers “How’s this sound?” if you ask, in English, in beta

Apple’s iOS 27 has a feature that comes closer. The iPhone User Guide for Siri AI (Beta) says you can use Siri to “compose, rewrite, proofread, and get feedback on what you’ve written”, and lists “How’s this sound?” as an example request under the heading “Get feedback”¹⁰. The same page says “If you don’t have Siri AI, you can use Writing Tools”¹⁰.

Apple spells out its limits. Siri AI is in beta, available in English to start, on the same Apple Intelligence devices, and Apple says it “will not initially be available in the EU on iOS”¹⁰. Apple’s feature availability page for iOS 27 lists Write with Siri as available in English and not available in China mainland or the European Union¹¹. Usage limits may apply¹⁰. It waits for you to ask. The guide does not say what form the feedback takes or describe it marking the words in your draft or scoring how safe the message is to send¹⁰. You join the beta through a waitlist, started from Settings, then Siri, then Try Siri AI (Beta), and wait times can vary¹². Apple’s 14 September 2026 announcement says French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish are coming “next month”⁷. German is not among them. Apple’s Siri AI setup page, opened on 10 October 2026, still says “Siri AI is currently available in English”, so I have not seen Apple confirm that any of the five has shipped¹². It also says Siri AI is not available on iOS in the EU, so an iPhone there does not have it yet¹². On an iPhone set to English, in a region Apple supports, it comes closer to a tone checker, though you still have to ask¹².

Gboard and Samsung Writing Assist work like Writing Tools on Android

Android owners get a near copy of Apple’s offer, and the gap is the same. Google’s Gboard keyboard has writing tools that Proofread, Rephrase, and shift tone with Professional, Friendly, Emojify, Elaborate and Shorten, on supported devices with Gboard set as the default keyboard¹³. Google’s help page lists English in several regions, Chinese (simplified), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, and says your input text “isn’t shared with Google or any app”, with processing “in a secure, isolated environment on your device or in the cloud”¹³. Google’s September 2025 Android announcement says instead that “All proofreading and rewriting of text happens on the device”¹⁴, so Google’s own pages describe the processing differently.

Samsung’s Writing assist sits in the Galaxy keyboard toolbar and offers spelling and grammar, writing styles including Professional, Casual, #social and Emojify, and a Composer that drafts a message in a chosen tone, on Galaxy devices with Android 14 and One UI 6.1 or later¹⁵. Samsung’s support page lists 16 languages across 23 locales¹⁵, and its Galaxy AI page lists 41 as of July 2026, with availability varying by region, device and One UI version¹⁶. I give both because the pages disagree.

Google’s Messages app also has Magic Compose, an experimental feature with limited availability that suggests replies or rewrites a drafted message in different styles. Google says the rewrite feature is English only and needs an Android phone with AICore¹⁷. It is a rewriter too. Neither Google nor Samsung documents an option that reads your draft and tells you how it will land. So the answer is wider than iPhone. In the Apple, Google and Samsung pages I checked, no phone keyboard documents a tone checker.

Where your text goes, on the device and in Private Cloud Compute

Apple’s iPhone User Guide says that “in many cases, Apple Intelligence models run entirely on device so that a task can be completed without data leaving your device”¹⁸. Requests that need more computing power can go to Private Cloud Compute, Apple’s servers running larger models, where “only the data that is relevant to your request is processed on Apple silicon servers, before being removed”¹⁸. The same page states that this data “is not stored or made accessible to Apple”, is “processed only to fulfill your request”, and that independent researchers can inspect the server code¹⁸. Apple’s legal page adds that Apple may collect limited information about a request: its size, the features used and how long it took, which it says excludes the content and is not identifiable or linked to your Apple Account¹⁹. If you have opted in to share Device Analytics, Apple says it may use techniques that protect privacy to collect aggregated trends, including about content processed by Apple Intelligence, to improve it¹⁹. The June 2024 write-up from Apple’s security team includes the rule that data “must not be retained, including via logging or for debugging, after the response is returned”²⁰.

You can see which requests left your phone. Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Apple Intelligence Report produces a file listing requests sent to Private Cloud Compute over the last 15 minutes or the last seven days¹⁸. Apple’s legal page calls the same setting Apple Intelligence & PCC Report¹⁹. These pages do not say which Writing Tools operations run on device and which go to the cloud, so I am not telling you either. The report is how to find out for your own phone. Private Cloud Compute is also not available in all regions¹⁸.

Where Google Cloud and ChatGPT come in

Apple’s own pages name at least two outside companies in the path a request can take, Google for part of Private Cloud Compute and OpenAI for ChatGPT. Apple’s privacy guide describes Private Cloud Compute as Apple silicon servers. In June 2026 Apple said it is collaborating with Google and NVIDIA to run new Apple Intelligence workloads on Google Cloud. Apple describes this as the first time its Private Cloud Compute privacy commitments reach data centres run by third parties, and says it keeps complete control of the software²¹. The post points this at demanding tasks such as agentic tool use and complex reasoning, and it does not name Writing Tools²¹.

The Compose option in Writing Tools sends your request to ChatGPT, and Apple says so on the same page, along with the limited device data that travels with it¹. Apple’s ChatGPT extension notice, which covers Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence, lists that data as the request and attachments plus details such as time zone, country, device type, language and the feature used, and says your IP address is obscured from ChatGPT²². Apple’s notice adds that your approximate location, derived from your IP address, is provided to ChatGPT for purposes such as fraud prevention and legal compliance, and that the extension is off until you enable it²². Without a ChatGPT account, Apple says OpenAI must process your information solely to fulfil your request, must not store it or any response unless the law requires it, and must not use it to improve or train its models²². If you sign in to ChatGPT, your account settings and OpenAI’s data privacy policies apply instead, and OpenAI may log your requests and use them to train or improve its models²².

What Subtext does that Writing Tools does not

As a co-founder of Subtext, a tone checker for messages, I have a stake in this section, so read it with that in mind. Subtext is built for the question Writing Tools does not take, which is how this message could land. Hand it a draft and it reads the text as a message someone is about to receive. It names up to three issues in your wording, most serious first, with labels such as passive-aggressive, guilt-tripping or sarcasm, and each comes with a short explanation, which quotes your own words where it points at a phrase. The app marks the words at fault on screen. It reads the main emotion behind your draft, then offers up to three versions, each with a safe-to-send score for how likely it is to land as you meant. On a first draft in a conversation, one version stays close to your words with the issues fixed, one is a warmer polish or a different approach, and one is a fuller rewrite. The reading comes first, and you pick a direction after it.

The app handles 17+ languages. If you write English as a second language, a message with correct grammar can still read as abrupt to a native speaker. It also takes a voice note, which it transcribes before reading. A plain dictation transcript tends to keep your fillers and the order you thought of things in. No independent evaluation of how Subtext reads tone turned up, so this section reports what the app shows and what its prompts and privacy policy say it does. It cannot know how the person you are writing to will take your message.

What Subtext does with a received message, and where your text goes

On a message you received, Subtext gives a one-line summary and two to five action points, and it does not label the sender’s tone. Subtext reads your drafts on its servers, so unlike the requests Apple says can run entirely on the device, your text does leave your phone. I set that trade against the other assistants’ training and retention policies. It goes to the providers Subtext’s privacy policy names, among them Anthropic (Claude), which receives the text, images and voice transcripts you submit, and Deepgram, which receives voice recordings. Nothing you submit is used to train an AI model, and the policy says none of its AI providers may train on your content. Subtext’s own copy of a conversation, with its attachments, is deleted automatically five days after you last used it, or 90 days if you pin it, and one you delete yourself is erased from Subtext’s servers straight away²³. Provider side, the policy says Anthropic deletes inputs and outputs within 30 days, may keep a request its safety systems flag for up to 2 years and the related safety scores for up to 7 years, and that Subtext has no zero-retention arrangement with any of its AI providers²³.

Unlike Writing Tools, Subtext does not sit in your keyboard, and the app is paid, with a few free analyses to start. If you have rewritten the same text four times and still cannot tell how it reads, what helps is a reading of the draft. Subtext’s tone checker for text messages gives you that reading. Try Subtext in your browserGet the appTry Subtext in your browser

Sources

Every link above goes to the primary source where one exists. Pages were checked on 4 and 5 October 2026. The Siri AI announcement, Apple’s feature availability page, the Siri AI setup page and Subtext’s privacy policy were opened again on 10 October 2026. Apple’s older “How to use Writing Tools” article (support.apple.com/en-us/121582) no longer loaded when I checked, so the iPhone User Guide is cited in its place.

1. Apple Support, Use Writing Tools to write, improve, and summarize content on iPhone. iPhone User Guide for iOS 27, including the language footnote and the ChatGPT Compose note.
2. Apple Support, Use Messages on your iPhone or iPad. Published 14 September 2026.
3. Apple Newsroom, Apple Intelligence is available today on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, 28 October 2024. iOS 18.1, US English.
4. Apple Newsroom, Apple Intelligence now features Image Playground, Genmoji, Writing Tools enhancements, seamless support for ChatGPT, and visual intelligence, 11 December 2024. iOS 18.2, Describe Your Change, localised English.
5. Apple Support, How to get the next generation of Apple Intelligence. Published 14 September 2026. Device list including iPhone Air, 16 languages, China mainland, automatic proofreading.
6. Apple Newsroom, Apple Intelligence features expand to new languages and regions today, 31 March 2025. iOS 18.4, eight languages, EU.
7. Apple Newsroom, Siri AI, a profoundly more capable and personal assistant, is here, 14 September 2026. Automatic proofreading as you type; French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish coming “next month”.
8. Kruger, J., Epley, N., Parker, J., and Ng, Z.-W. (2005). Egocentrism over e-mail: Can we communicate as well as we think? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(6), 925 to 936. Five experiments; abstract quoted. Studies 1 and 2: 12 and 60 students at Cornell University; Study 3: 154 pairs of University of Illinois students; Studies 4 and 5: 54 and 58 Illinois students. Supported by University of Illinois Board of Trustees research grant 1-2-69853 (to Kruger) and National Science Foundation grant SES-0241544 (to Epley).
9. Pollmann, M. M. H., and Roos, C. A. (2025). “I get u”. People correctly interpret the tone of text messages and emails. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 18, 100689. Peer reviewed, open access. Study 1: text messages, 347 receivers and 171 senders. Study 2: emails in a work or education context, 361 receivers and 61 senders. Rates message valence, positive or negative. I read the abstract; the full text did not open for me, so I report no funding or competing interests statement.
10. Apple Support, Siri AI: Write with Siri on iPhone. iPhone User Guide for iOS 27. Beta, English to start, not initially in the EU on iOS.
11. Apple, iOS and iPadOS 27 Feature Availability. The Write with Siri row: English, not available in China mainland or the European Union. The page shows no date; retrieved 5 and 10 October 2026.
12. Apple Support, How to get Siri AI. Published 22 September 2026. Setup path in Settings, the waitlist, wait times; English only for now; not available on iOS in the EU. Reopened 10 October 2026.
13. Google, Use writing tools with Gboard. Gboard Help.
14. Google (Angana Ghosh), New on Android: AI writing tools in Gboard and more, Android blog, 3 September 2025. Gboard writing tools announcement.
15. Samsung, Use Writing assist on Galaxy phones and tablets. 16 languages, 23 locales.
16. Samsung, Discover Samsung Galaxy AI Features. Writing Assist languages as of July 2026 (41); the Australian Galaxy AI page carries the same list.
17. Google, Draft messages with Magic Compose. Google Messages Help.
18. Apple Support, Apple Intelligence and privacy on iPhone. iPhone User Guide for iOS 27, including the Apple Intelligence Report steps.
19. Apple Legal, Apple Intelligence & Privacy. Page dated 14 September 2026. Limited request information and Device Analytics.
20. Apple Security Research, Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud, 10 June 2024.
21. Apple Security Research, Expanding Private Cloud Compute, 8 June 2026. Google Cloud and NVIDIA collaboration.
22. Apple Legal, ChatGPT Extension & Privacy. Page dated 14 September 2026. Use with and without a ChatGPT account.
23. Subtext, Terms, privacy and your account. Privacy policy last updated 26 July 2026. Checked 10 October 2026.