How to Use Apple Intelligence to Edit Screenshots on Mac

Apple Intelligence meets Mac screenshots

Apple Intelligence arrived with macOS Sequoia 15.1 and brought a set of AI-powered editing tools to the Mac. Most guides focus on using these features with photos, but they work on screenshots too — and some of them are genuinely useful for cleaning up screen captures before you share them.

This guide covers every Apple Intelligence feature that applies to screenshots: the Clean Up tool for removing unwanted objects, Writing Tools for working with text in your captures, image descriptions for accessibility, and Visual Look Up for identifying on-screen content. We'll also cover where these tools fall short and when you're better off using a dedicated screenshot tool.

What you need

Apple Intelligence requires specific hardware and software:

• Chip: Apple M1 or later (any M-series Mac)
• macOS: Sequoia 15.1 or later (including macOS Tahoe)
• Storage: At least 4 GB of free space for the AI models
• Language: Siri and device language set to a supported language
• Apple Intelligence enabled: System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri > Apple Intelligence toggle on

Intel Macs don't support Apple Intelligence at all. If you're on an older machine, skip to the alternatives section at the bottom.

Clean Up: remove unwanted objects from screenshots

Clean Up is the most useful Apple Intelligence feature for screenshots. It uses generative AI to remove objects from images and fill in the background.

How to use Clean Up on a screenshot

1. Open your screenshot in the Photos app (double-click the file, or drag it into Photos)
2. Click Edit in the toolbar (or press Cmd+Return)
3. Click Clean Up in the editing toolbar — it looks like an eraser icon
4. Apple Intelligence automatically highlights objects it thinks you might want to remove. You can click a highlighted object, or brush/circle over anything else
5. The tool processes for a moment, then fills in the area
6. Click Done to save

What Clean Up handles well on screenshots

• Desktop icons: Remove stray files and folders visible on your Desktop before sharing a full-screen capture
• Notification badges: Clean up red badge counts on Dock icons that reveal unread message counts
• Cursor artifacts: Remove the mouse pointer if it was accidentally captured
• Stray toolbar elements: Remove a single button or icon that clutters an otherwise clean interface shot
• Personal identifiers: Remove a profile picture or avatar visible in a toolbar
• Watermarks on backgrounds: Remove small watermarks from wallpapers visible in screenshots

Where Clean Up struggles with screenshots

Screenshots are fundamentally different from photos. They contain precise pixel-level UI elements, text, and geometric patterns that AI can't always reconstruct accurately:

• Large UI regions: Removing an entire sidebar or panel leaves obvious artifacts because the AI doesn't know what the interface should look like underneath
• Text areas: Clean Up can't regenerate readable text. Removing a text block leaves blurry, garbled characters
• Repeating patterns: Table rows, list items, and grid layouts confuse the fill algorithm
• High-contrast edges: UI borders, shadows, and sharp dividers often leave visible seams after removal

For heavy redaction or large removals, you're better off cropping the screenshot or using an annotation tool to place a solid rectangle over the area.

Writing Tools: work with text in screenshots

Apple Intelligence Writing Tools can interact with text that macOS recognizes in your screenshots through Live Text (OCR). This works in Preview and Quick Look, not just Photos.

How to use Writing Tools on screenshot text

1. Open a screenshot in Preview or view it with Quick Look (select the file in Finder and press Space)
2. Hover over any text in the screenshot — if Live Text recognizes it, the cursor changes to a text selection cursor
3. Select the text you want to work with
4. Right-click and choose Writing Tools from the context menu
5. Choose an action: Proofread, Rewrite, Friendly, Professional, Concise, or Summary

Practical uses for screenshot text

• Summarize error messages: Select a verbose error dialog in a screenshot and get a concise summary to paste into a bug report
• Rewrite for tone: Capture a draft email or message, select the text, and use Writing Tools to make it more professional or concise before rewriting the actual message
• Extract and proofread: Select marketing copy or UI text in a screenshot and run Proofread to catch typos before the content ships

Note that Writing Tools operates on the extracted text, not the screenshot itself. The rewritten text appears in a popover that you can copy — it doesn't modify the image.

Image descriptions: auto-generate alt text for screenshots

Apple Intelligence can generate natural-language descriptions of images, including screenshots. This is useful for accessibility (writing alt text) and for quickly describing what a screenshot shows when filing bug reports or writing documentation.

How to get a description

1. Open a screenshot in Photos
2. Click the info (i) button or press Cmd+I
3. In the info panel, look for Description — Apple Intelligence may have already generated one
4. If not, you may see a text field where you can ask for a description

The generated descriptions are basic but serviceable. For a screenshot of a code editor, you might get something like “A code editor window showing Python code with a sidebar of files on the left.” It won't describe specific code content, but it captures the general layout.

For documentation and blog posts where you need proper alt text for screenshots, the AI-generated description gives you a starting point to edit rather than writing from scratch.

Visual Look Up: identify content in screenshots

Visual Look Up lets you identify objects, landmarks, plants, animals, and other recognizable content within images. On screenshots, this has a narrow but real use case: identifying UI icons, logos, or real-world objects that appear in your captures.

How to use Visual Look Up

1. Open a screenshot in Photos
2. If Visual Look Up detects something recognizable, a sparkle icon appears on the info button
3. Click the info button, and recognized objects appear with contextual information

In practice, Visual Look Up works on screenshots that contain real-world imagery — for example, a screenshot of a web page showing a product photo. For pure UI screenshots with menus and code, it rarely detects anything useful.

Siri: ask about your screenshots

With Apple Intelligence, Siri can answer questions about images on your screen. You can ask Siri things like:

• “What does this screenshot show?”
• “Summarize the text in this image”
• “Read the error message in this screenshot”

This works best with the new Type to Siri interface (double-tap Cmd to activate). Point Siri to a screenshot on your screen, and it uses on-device understanding to describe and interpret the content.

Limitations of Apple Intelligence for screenshots

The biggest limitation: Apple Intelligence edits require importing your screenshot into Photos (for Clean Up) or using specific apps (for Writing Tools). There's no way to access these features directly from the Screenshot app or the floating thumbnail preview. This adds friction to what should be a fast workflow.

When to use dedicated screenshot tools instead

Apple Intelligence is useful for occasional cleanup, but it wasn't designed for screenshot workflows. Here's when you should use a dedicated tool instead:

• Redacting sensitive information: Use a proper annotation tool with solid rectangle overlays instead of AI-based removal. Clean Up might leave traces of the original content
• Adding annotations: Arrows, numbered steps, text callouts, and highlights require actual screenshot annotation tools, not AI
• Batch editing: Apple Intelligence processes one image at a time. For processing dozens of screenshots, use Automator, shortcuts, or a dedicated tool
• Professional formatting: Adding backgrounds, device frames, rounded corners, and consistent sizing requires purpose-built screenshot tools
• Speed: If you take screenshots frequently, the Photos import workflow is too slow. Tools that annotate and beautify screenshots in one step save significant time

Quick reference: Apple Intelligence screenshot features