If your Home accessory alerts now arrive as one summary, Apple Intelligence is doing it, and it is on unless you switch it off. Apple’s support document on the Home app, published September 16, says Reduced Notifications is on by default, while Summarize Videos, which captions security camera clips, starts off.
The document also gives the exact switches for both features, including one per camera, and sets out what happens to camera footage that leaves your home.
The two defaults
Apple puts it in one line: “By default, Apple Intelligence is on for Reduced Notifications and off for Summarize Videos.” Homeowners and admins can change either at any time, and turning off Apple Intelligence in the Settings app switches off both.
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Reduced Notifications “provides a single alert summary instead of multiple alerts.” Because it is on by default, it starts merging alerts without any setup, so a quieter Home app after the update is by design rather than a fault. Turning it off brings back separate alerts.
Summarize Videos works with HomeKit Secure Video (HKSV) cameras. Apple says it “analyzes camera activity to create descriptive captions” for “eligible iCloud+ users.” Apple’s iOS & iPadOS 27 release notes set the bar higher: “Apple Intelligence for Home requires an iCloud+ subscription starting at 2TB.” We covered that requirement and what each iCloud+ tier costs on September 17.
How to turn Reduced Notifications off or on
- Open the Home app.
- Tap the More button, then tap Home Settings.
- Tap Apple Intelligence.
- Tap Reduced Notifications to turn it off or on.
Switch it off if you rely on seeing exactly which accessory fired, such as a particular door sensor.
How to turn Summarize Videos on or off
For all HKSV cameras, follow the same path:
- Open the Home app.
- Tap the More button, then tap Home Settings.
- Tap Apple Intelligence.
- Tap Summarize Videos to turn it on or off.
For one camera:
- Open the Home app.
- Tap the HKSV camera.
- Tap Summarize Videos to turn it on or off.
The per-camera switch lets you caption the driveway and leave an indoor camera alone. Apple says cameras that don’t use Summarize Videos “only analyze content on-device,” and the Home app stores all camera recordings with end-to-end encryption either way.
Where your camera footage goes
Apple says Apple Intelligence in the Home app handles simple requests on the device and sends complex ones to Private Cloud Compute (PCC), its server system for Apple Intelligence. Summarize Videos is Apple’s worked example, in four steps:
- Your home devices analyze camera footage for activity.
- If they detect relevant activity, which Apple gives as “people, pets, or packages,” they send the footage to PCC for further analysis.
- PCC generates captions to describe the activity.
- PCC sends the captions back to your home devices and “permanently deletes the data from PCC.”
“Even when PCC is used, your data is never stored or accessible to Apple,” the document says. The release notes describe the same arrangement: with Apple Intelligence in the Home app turned on, HomeKit Secure Video recordings “are processed on-device and through Private Cloud Compute for video descriptions and search.”
Check what was sent
The Home app keeps a record you can inspect. In Home Settings, Apple says homeowners can:
- Create an Apple Intelligence Report “to obtain a log of every request sent to PCC.”
- Change how long the Home app keeps PCC requests.
- Turn off Apple Intelligence Reports.
Apple gives the report controls to homeowners only, while both homeowners and admins can flip the two feature switches. For the rest of what Apple Intelligence gained in the update, see our list of 20 new Apple Intelligence features in iOS 27.
