Mac Users Reclaim 12GB+ of Storage With Apple Intelligence Removal Tool (macrumors.com)
- Reference: 0186031104
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/10/05/1747205/mac-users-reclaim-12gb-of-storage-with-apple-intelligence-removal-tool
- Source link: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/10/05/apple-intelligence-removal-tool-frees-mac-storage/
> In macOS 27, Apple removed the toggle to disable Apple Intelligence wholesale, and simply disabling individual features doesn't remove the models from your Mac's drive. As [3]explained by the developer , RemoveMacAI gets around this by using a configuration profile to switch off Apple's own asset management service and remove the models.
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> It then configures the system so attempts to download the removed models are redirected to a closed local port, preventing them from immediately coming back. And it does all this without disabling System Integrity Protection (SIP) or manually deleting files from protected system locations, unlike some older tools have. The tool can free up roughly 12GB of space depending on which models are present on your Mac. That said, some users are [4]reporting [5]cases of Apple Intelligence models having taken up a lot more space, which they've now reclaimed.
[1] https://github.com/omlahore/RemoveMacAI
[2] https://www.macrumors.com/2026/10/05/apple-intelligence-removal-tool-frees-mac-storage/
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1ww1exr/macos_27_dropped_the_apple_intelligence_off/
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1ww1exr/macos_27_dropped_the_apple_intelligence_off/
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49957116
Cost of SSD per GB (Score:2, Informative)
Its great that people have an option to delete the model...fine. But keep in mind that they are saving somewhere between $1.32 and $6.00 depending on how much they pay for SSD storage. If you just want to offset 12GB to the cloud, 15GB of Google Drive is free. Considering that Siri actually works now, its probably worth keeping around.
Re: (Score:3)
> Its great that people have an option to delete the model...fine. But keep in mind that they are saving somewhere between $1.32 and $6.00 depending on how much they pay for SSD storage.
Oh look, this misleading bullshit was posted by someone whose name begins with "mac", what a shocker. Apple devices overwhelmingly don't have socketed storage (that is, almost none of them do any more) and they charge far more than the average for storage, and the average has gone up a lot to boot.
More importantly, your OS vendor shouldn't be pushing bullshit you didn't want and don't need and makes your system less secure without your permission. That's some Microsoft shit. Apple is no better than Microsof
Re: (Score:2)
you know you can have more than one drive?
Re: (Score:2)
On a laptop? Unless you want the other drive trailing around by its USB cable that is not an option.
Keep in mind that Tightwad Tim [Cook] kept 256 GB storage the base spec for a long time. In fact the brand new M6 Mac mini Still Ships With 256 GB, as does the Neo.
One other note, multiple people reported that the actual AI storage is 25 to 30 GB.
Re: (Score:3)
Apple has been the single most fascist PC company for over a decade. Soldered ram, soldered ssd, no repair guides unless forced by law. Walled garden locked down hardware etc. Microsoft looks like saints in comparison.
Re:Cost of SSD per GB (Score:4, Insightful)
While it's soldered in SSD for many Mac models, so a post-purchase upgrade is generally not practical. And while the pricing is a little steeper than NVMe, closer to 40 cents a GB, that still puts the 12GB into around $5, perfectly in your suggested range. Perhaps people buying a 512GB Mac should consider a 1TB Mac (~$200 more) if they are concerned about space wasted by the OS install.
Cloud storage is not equivalent to local storage. Not in how applications use it. Not in performance. And not in availability. The two are apples and oranges.
I generally believe the end-users should decide what is installed on their computer. But most OS vendors do not offer full customization. It seems like every major one likes to put their pet projects into a device meant for general use. And power users with unusual use cases complain that the general purpose consumer device is not finely tuned to their special needs. So maybe people should consider running an obscure Linux distro if they are unhappy with bundled software found in essentially every mainstream computing device for consumers.
Re: (Score:1)
> I generally believe the end-users should decide what is installed on their computer. But most OS vendors do not offer full customization.
That's true, but a) that's crappy and b) they used to offer more, and the actually good OSes used to offer a lot more and still do . Unixes and Unixlikes other than OSX still generally allow you to install pretty small subsets of the OS.
Re: (Score:2)
My ideal OS is one that is just some minimal base that is enough to run a package manager and perhaps a small diagnostic suite and recovery. And everything else is a package on top. FreeBSD, some Linux distros, etc come very close to that ideal.
Re: Cost of SSD per GB (Score:2)
Same. When I install Linux I do a minimal install and then add only what I want. I am usually doing something weird on install so this is frequently the only way that makes sense.
Damn (Score:2)
I didn't know I was so interesting there'd be 12 GB of shit on me.
I bet you could reclaim even more (Score:2)
By wiping the drive entirely clean and installing a minimalist Linux on it, then only install apps as needed
Re: (Score:2)
Linux only runs on intel macs.
Asahi runs on M1 and M2 but it's a half-baked buggy piece of shit. M3 thru m6 have no linux support and maybe never will due to hardware security models.
I'm sticking with my intel mac (Score:2)
It's still more than fast enough except for games (and I've got a ps5 for those) plus apple thankfully havent bothered to backport their models to x86, probably due to no neural shit in the cpu.
Re: (Score:2)
I actually just bought a refurbished 15" M4 MacBook Air (for various reasons), but I'm also hanging on to my Intel-based MacBook Pro since it's running fine. The latter machine currently has a small-ish Linux Mint partition alongside macOS, but I'm thinking of switching it to Linux-only.
Note that, if you do this, you need carefully chose your distro if your Mac has the T2 security chip.
Or you could ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... take your Mac down to the rifle range and use it as a target.
It's the only way to be sure.
Re: (Score:2)
Burning targets are not allowed at my range. :-)
Such a shame: Apple did it roght (Score:2)
I would love for my devices to have their AI models local like Apple did. It is really annoying to say "Play song ABC" and even though ABC is a local file, my device goes to the cloud. But Apple gave customers privacy, security, and resiliency - and everyone complained that it took up space. So next time you want to complain that companies are requiring Internet connections for stuff that could be done locally, remember that someone tried and it was rejected.
Re: Such a shame: Apple did it roght (Score:2)
Doing it right is asking whether you want it installed, not forcing it on you.
Were you in a frat at Cornell or what?
Re: (Score:2)
The point you missed is that I don't want AI at all.
Opt-in much? (Score:3, Insightful)
So first it was opt in, but because nobody really wanted or asked for it, it became opt out. Still, nobody wanted it, so now they don't even get a choice. And ifans wonder why I don't like apple.
Re:Opt-in much? (Score:4, Funny)
Nobody cared if he liked Apple, at first it was opt-in. But now it became opt-out when he told everyone that he didn't like Apple. Still, nobody cared that he didn't like Apple but we don't even get a choice.
Re:Opt-in much? (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody cared about the commentary on his feelings about Apple...
Re: (Score:2)
The branding became an all encompassing thing and that was a mistake that had to be rectified. People thought of it all as summarising text, generating images and natural English commands (generative model use) and wanted to gut the lot because of it. It's similar to the mistake Mozilla made where they included a toggle to
There's no relationship between what people want rid of and tab grouping in Safari, automated password changing in Passwords, an improved voice dictation model, grabbing related/relevan