Apple has publicly released macOS Sequoia 15.3, which brings with it new features and improvements, but also temporarily takes away certain notification summaries.
Following the release of macOS Sequoia 15.2 in December 2024 and several subsequent betas of its followup, version 15.3 is now the official macOS and will be preinstalled on new Macs. Among the changes are bug fixes for Genmoji, and a more behind-the-scenes fix for how third-party apps could use Apple’s Writing Tools.
Apple Intelligence now defaults to being on unless a user elects to turn it off. While that seems obvious, previously users had to specifically choose to download Apple Intelligence.
Genmoji, where users can describe an emoji they want and have Apple Intelligence create it for them, is now available in Messages and other apps. Image Playground, which similarly creates any image described to it, has seen performance improvements.
The Calendar app has now also been updated to include repeated calculations. After entering, for instance, 7 x 7 and getting 49, users can click the equals button to now see 7 x 49, which is 343, or click again to see 343 x 7, and so on.
Notification changes
In response to complaints from BBC News about Apple Intelligence notification summaries changing news stories, macOS Sequoia 15.3 has brought some temporary fixes. Most notably, there are no longer automatic summaries of news or entertainment articles.
Those summary notifications that do continue — such as Messages summaries — are now shown in italics to differentiate them from regular notifications.
What happens next
The new macOS 15.3 will, of course, be followed by macOS 15.4, which is now expected to arrive in March 2025. In most years, it’s a reasonable assumption that further updates will follow, but in this case Apple has specified that key Apple Intelligence features will be rolling out during macOS 15’s series of updates.
Following WWDC in June, macOS will be on version 16 and, apart from security fixes, macOS 15 may not see further updates.
It’s believed now, for example, that the much-awaited Apple Intelligence improvements to Siri will not arrive until a version of macOS 16 sometime in 2026.