RemoveMacAI turns off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and frees up about 12GB

Because the off switch disappeared.

No single toggle: unlike earlier versions of macOS, macOS 27 doesn't have a toggle for turning off Apple Intelligence, Ars Technica reports. That makes disabling AI features you don't want more difficult.

Models stay put: even if you dig through settings and disable features one by one, the models that power Apple Intelligence keep taking up space on your disk, according to the developer.

Growing models: Apple Intelligence needed up to 7GB of storage on macOS 26, and Apple now says its latest models can require up to 14GB on newer Macs, 9to5Mac reports.

An independent developer, Om Lahore, published RemoveMacAI on GitHub late last week. It's released under the MIT license.

Lahore credits an earlier project, pared by a developer called 4evy, for doing "the hard work first": mapping Apple's asset service, the model sets and the settings keys RemoveMacAI relies on.

The project caught on fast. It had 1,700 stars on GitHub when Ars Technica wrote about it, and more than 2,800 by Tuesday morning. MacRumors, AppleInsider and Help Net Security have also covered it.

Quite a lot. According to the project page, RemoveMacAI turns off:

• Siri, including "Hey Siri" and the menu bar icon
• Writing Tools, Genmoji and Image Playground
• the ChatGPT extension
• summaries in Mail, Messages, Safari, Notes and notifications
• Mail smart replies and inline text predictions
• Spatial Photos and Photos Clean Up
• Xcode predictive code completion

Models removed: the Apple Intelligence foundation models, plus the models for image generation and Genmoji, Spatial Photos, Photos Clean Up and Xcode code completion.

Also stops working: apps that use Apple's on-device models through the Foundation Models framework, the Use Model action in Shortcuts, Visual Intelligence and natural-language editing in Calendar.

What survives: dictation still works, because it's a separate setting and its speech models aren't removed.

You don't have to go all in. A --keep option leaves selected features on, such as the Photos tools, while turning off the rest.

Without breaking macOS's main protections, the developer says.

A configuration profile: RemoveMacAI installs a profile, which macOS requires you to approve in System Settings. It applies Apple's own restriction keys for Apple Intelligence and forces settings that don't have a restriction key.

Apple's asset service: it removes the models through the same service Apple uses to manage them. System Integrity Protection stays enabled, and nothing under /System is modified directly.

Blocking re-downloads: the profile redirects downloads of each removed model to a closed local port, so macOS doesn't fetch them again, Slashdot reports, citing MacRumors.

In the developer's own words on Reddit, as quoted by Ars Technica: "It uses a configuration profile you approve in System Settings plus Apple's own asset service, so [System Integrity Protection] stays on and nothing in /System gets touched directly."

Privacy: the developer says the tool makes no network requests and collects no data. Releases are built by GitHub Actions and carry build provenance attestations so users can check a download came from the project's source.

There are three ways, according to the project page.

The one-liner: paste a single curl command into Terminal. The install script downloads the latest release, verifies its SHA-256 checksum and runs it from a temporary directory, so nothing is installed permanently.

Manual download: download the release file and its checksum yourself, verify it and run it. The binary is ad-hoc signed but not notarized by Apple, so macOS won't run a copy downloaded through a browser until you remove the quarantine flag.

Homebrew: brew install omlahore/tap/removemacai, then run removemacai.

Before changing anything, the tool shows the current state and asks for confirmation. It then opens System Settings so you can approve its configuration profile, and removes the models.

Useful commands: removemacai status shows each feature and how much space its models use on disk. removemacai off --dry-run shows the changes without applying them. If removing a model fails or can't be confirmed, the tool exits with an error and tells you to check the warnings before trying again.

"In macOS 27 the Spotlight window runs as a process named Siri," the FAQ notes, so seeing a Siri process still running after the tool finishes doesn't mean something went wrong.

The developer says roughly 12GB, depending on which models are present.

Some users say more. The Verge noted the models can take up over 30GB, according to Ars Technica, and Slashdot reports some users reclaimed far more space than 12GB.

One quirk: Storage settings may keep listing Apple Intelligence for a while after the models are deleted, because macOS removes the files on its own schedule, the FAQ explains.

Yes. Running removemacai revert removes the profile, and macOS downloads the models again when you turn a feature back on, the developer says.

The changes also survive macOS updates, according to the FAQ, because the profile and its download block persist. The project says it's tested on macOS 27.0, and users on 27.0.1 should use version 0.2.3 or later. It requires an Apple silicon Mac.

9to5Mac urges caution.

Unofficial: RemoveMacAI is a third-party tool making system-level changes, and users should be comfortable with how it works, the site says.

Apple could change things: it relies on configuration profiles, restriction keys and system services that Apple could change at any time. A future macOS update could make parts of it stop working or cause unexpected behavior until the project catches up.

Unknown side effects: there's no way to know how removing these components could affect macOS or third-party apps that increasingly rely on Apple's models, 9to5Mac adds.

Still, the site called it "a well-intentioned open-source project aimed at giving Mac users more autonomy and control," and noted that reclaiming 12GB can make a real difference on 256GB Macs.

The interest in RemoveMacAI shows how some users feel about AI features they didn't ask for, Ars Technica notes.

"Reminds me of all the de-crufting you've always needed to do when you install Windows," one Hacker News user wrote. "Looks like we've gotten to the point on macOS too, where you need to run third-party scripts on a new OS installation to gain back control of your system resources."

• If your Mac is short on space: RemoveMacAI can free about 12GB or more, but check the list of features you'll lose first.
• If you use Siri or Writing Tools: use --keep or skip the tool, since it turns them off by default.
• If you're cautious: run removemacai off --dry-run to see the changes without applying them.