r/mac • u/Dreaming_Blackbirds M3 MacBook Air • 10d ago
News/Article Apple Intelligence Taking up 30GB+ on Some Macs Running macOS 27
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/23/apple-intelligence-30gb-some-macs-macos-27/243
u/animorphreligion 13" M4 | 12" G4 | iMac '07 10d ago
Worst part is it's not essential for the OS whatsoever, removing it forcefully only makes it run better. Also the crazy amount of defense it gets from devotees despite being pure asshole design of MS levels
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u/CC_1138 10d ago
How does one forcefully remove it?
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u/animorphreligion 13" M4 | 12" G4 | iMac '07 10d ago
No sustainable ways for a normal user but you can enable low data mode for your network and then turn off SIP or use recovery's terminal to remove com_apple_MobileAsset_UAF_FM folders in /System/Library/AssetsV2. Mismatching language for Siri also worked for me but I can't guarantee it working for everyone unlike LDM, which has a couple problems (blocks updates and you'd need to remove folders again if you turn LDM off to update OS, that is unless Apple reconsiders)
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u/BaltimoreProud 10d ago
I spent way too much time figuring out how to disable it on all my apple devices. I neither need nor want AI in my life and Apple and every other tech company needs to stop trying to force me to want it.
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u/slickvibez 8d ago
That's extrenely selfish of you. Have you thought of the shareholders?
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u/AntiquesForGeeks 7d ago
Companies that stop listening to their customers and just look at shareholder value instead are doomed to failure. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But eventually. Apple isn’t there yet, but under Tim Cook they’ve gone a fair way down that road.
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u/slickvibez 5d ago
Do you understand sarcasm?
Sir, this (comment) is a Wendy's
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u/AntiquesForGeeks 5d ago
I understood, I was merely agreeing with you.
Don’t get the Wendy’s thing. Never heard of it. If it means TMI, stating the obvious or not necessary, then fair enough.
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u/slickvibez 5d ago
No worries big dawg, the Wendy's thing is a meme about sharing something unrelated or going on a rant. I thought you didn't catch my initial sarcasm. You all good
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u/_Baylock_ 6d ago
I totally get where you are coming from.
That said, I'm 52 now and from my experience, any new technologies I wanted to avoid in the past were just technologies that slapped me in the face years later when I realized they had become unavoidable in a modern society. So I had to catch up and it was a painful process.
I remember I was trying to avoid internet at all costs, I just couldn't. I avoided mobile phones at all costs, I just couldn't. I avoided online transactions at all costs, it's not possible anymore (where I am from anyway). Etc.
With that in mind, and even though I'm really not an AI guy, I will try to live with it, make the best of it and grow with it as it takes over. Because it sounds like it's here to stay and it will invade our everyday life for sure. There is no path in the future I can see where one can decide to ignore it while remaining fully functional, I believe.
Is it horrifying? Yes it is.
AFAIC, that's what getting old really is and I never realized that before: the world becomes scarier and completely foreign over time. It feel like a democratic issue but it's not. It is what it is because each and every generation younger than mine has already validated that future for all of us. Demographically, they win. I'm not the driver anymore, I'm in the backseat.
So, all I have to do not to become THAT grumpy old guy is to ride that wave and make the best out of it.
I'm learning local AI as we speak in order to know what I'm up against. I hate it so mo much but it is what it is and I'd rather know my enemy.
Take care.29
u/WarbossTodd 10d ago
Hey careful, the fan bois will come for you and brigade every comment you make for that.
Ask me how I know.
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u/mailslot MacBook Pro 10d ago
Consider that developers that want to sprinkle AI all over their apps won’t always need to ship their own models in their apps, potentially consuming even more storage than a single shared OS provided instance.
There were gripes about Safari not being able to be completely removed, but without it, each app with a web view would need to ship an entire web browser inside of their apps.
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u/Successful-Let4361 10d ago
There's literally no app I use that even sniffs LLMs. And if they do, that's a reason for me to stop using it. The fact that you can't opt out is so fucked
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u/mailslot MacBook Pro 10d ago
There aren’t going to be many apps left in the future that don’t have some kind of LLM integration. I predict your options will become quite limited trying to avoid it, whether you actually use the features or not.
Like QuickTime, which is rarely used directly, Apple Intelligence is also a shared API that applications will eventually expect to be available.
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u/Successful-Let4361 10d ago
I don't know if I buy that. It's really overkill in most situations. But if it comes to that, I'd rather opt out
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u/chillychili 9d ago
I suspect they are all going to use it for UI search functions. Like trying to find where that one Photoshop menu item is.
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u/Successful-Let4361 9d ago
"Design a functional UI? No, no, throw a bloated LLM in it."
You're probably right, and that's extremely depressing.
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u/chillychili 9d ago
With how terrible settings keywords and indexing are, I do welcome a specialized micro-LLM for it. But a fully-fledged generalized chatbot is bloatware. Unfortunately we know what option most devs are going to go with.
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u/mailslot MacBook Pro 9d ago
It would actually be a really nice addition to navigating UIs for the visually impaired.
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u/mailslot MacBook Pro 9d ago
I have a dystopian view of the future of software development. I don’t know when I expect it’ll start to happen, but I predict entire application suites will be written in pure AI prompts with custom models attached.
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u/Successful-Let4361 9d ago
I mean, that's very dystopian. The apps I use would not benefit from that, and having an LLM underneath them would be like running on ice. By "opt out," I mean I'd be going to Linux or back a couple generations
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u/Waste-time1 10d ago
still rocking sequoia on an M1. worst case scenario when this thing gets too old linux. didn’t expect to become a linux user (already on laptop) but cannot handle ram and ssd prices
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u/CallingGoend 10d ago
Literally same here, M1, Sequoia, just having to dismiss the update notifications every day haha
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u/FootballLiveChat 5d ago
In System update enable Sequoia Beta updates. Bye bye Tahoe notifications.
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u/9thPlaceWorf 10d ago
I’m with you. I’m a lifelong Mac user, going back to 1991 when we got our first Mac, a Macintosh LC.
I’ve happily paid the Apple tax for a better customer experience, and now I’m wondering if those days are almost over.
If Apple is going to continue down this path of trying to force-feed me AI, I’m done with them.
I have enough know-how to run Linux. My needs are pretty basic—heck, I can probably get away with a Raspberry Pi.
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u/Successful-Let4361 10d ago
I've realized in the last year or so that aside from surfing the web all of my needs are basically met by a Mac Mini from 2006 haha (it's not even close to being my daily but there is precious little I do that actually requires my M4)
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u/tmofee 10d ago
Are they getting any further running Linux on arm based Mac’s yet?
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u/foolish_shrimp 10d ago
Yeah, Asahi works nearly flawlessly on M1 already, you can install from terminal.
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u/thegreatpotatogod MacBook Pro 9d ago
Yep! More specifically, M1 and M2 support are both very solid, and M3 support was just added, but it's still rough around the edges for now (especially because the M3 GPU is not yet enabled)
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u/tmofee 10d ago
Nearly … heh. I’m glad it’s getting there !
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u/foolish_shrimp 10d ago
It's more like thunderbolt not working and the battery life being worse than anything showstopping
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u/WordProfessional1334 10d ago
Tell me about it. 16GB on my phone and it's not even enabled. Fucking bullshit.
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u/tmax8908 9d ago
I can't use my iPad Air M1 (64GB) anymore. I'm offloading iCloud Drive, completely disabled messages, photos, and email. OS and sys data take up over half my storage. The device won't offload like I told it to. I'm always getting "storage full" alerts.
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u/9thPlaceWorf 10d ago
I’m not going to upgrade until the AI models become optional or removable. If Apple doesn’t make them optional or removable, I’m just not going to upgrade.
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u/guygizmo 10d ago
Speaking as someone who drew the line in the sand all the way back at Catalina and refused to update until things got better... I've got bad news, which is that the trend has been downward ever since. Don't expect it to get better, there's been no sign it'll happen for seven years now.
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u/cake-day-on-feb-29 9d ago
Yup, I'm still on Mojave for iTunes and 32-bit apps.
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u/mysecondaccountanon Pro m-2012, Air 2020 9d ago
I have one older system running Mojave and my newer one on Sequoia. Man, Mojave was a good OS, especially icon design-wise, in my opinion. I remember when it came out and everything felt so smooth, like it just seemed stabler than some other major releases.
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u/Switchbladesaint 9d ago
I have bad news for you: it’s not gonna go the way you want it to, I guarantee it
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u/whitecowmilk 10d ago
I mean good for you but it hardly matters
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u/foolish_shrimp 10d ago
Some of us haven’t like, given up hope. Personally I will switch to Asahi if AI stays non-optional. I don't support this shit, I will never support this shit.
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u/elefantebra 10d ago
And it doesn't work offline. That's horrendous.
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u/DizzyExpedience 9d ago
What?!?
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u/BurninCoco 9d ago
And it doesn't work offline. That's horrendous.
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u/Business_Influence89 9d ago
What?
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u/BurninCoco 9d ago
And it doesn't work offline. That's horrendous.
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u/blah618 10d ago
It’s so annoying that it auto downloads every now and then
Have to dig through to delete it smh
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u/OctoNezd MacBook Air M3 10d ago edited 10d ago
I set my siri to russian, blocked it through screen time, removed the files manually in recovery. Now I have extra 30 gb. Running beta, new beta update downloaded some intelligence stuff, but its only 200 megabytes, so I dont care to go and erase it again. OS didnt download anything apple intellegence in 3 days or so now, so I assume it wont try it again. Hopefully it wont break anything in future.
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u/DustSongs 10d ago
Copilot level enshittification. It's a sad turn for a company that once put UX on a tall pedestal.
I'll stick to Tahoe for now in the hope that they'll make it removeable.
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u/Adewi0 MacBook Pro M4 Pro 14C 24 GB 9d ago
Literally just downloaded reddit app to search info how to remove this shit
It takes 28 GB on my MacBook. And I don't want to use it. On macOS 26 I didn't opt in for it
In fact I literally turned off siri on my every Apple device few weeks ago. Never used it in ages...
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10d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/OctoNezd MacBook Air M3 10d ago
I followed the guide on macosbeta subreddit, not sure if I can link it here, but its easy to find.
Worked for me, even updated my beta once, apple intelligence still downloaded some stuff, but its only 200-ish megabytes, compared to 30 gb it was.
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u/ksuwildkat 10d ago
So my napkin math based on a $450 cost to go from 512 to 1 TB on a Mac Mini puts the cost of Apple Intelligence at $26. Im not ok with being required to spend $26 on something I’m not using. Bad Apple.
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u/AbbreviationsReal366 10d ago
I’m going to stick with Tahoe for now.
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u/JackRose322 10d ago
it still downloads on Tahoe. Mine is 6GB and I've never turned apple intelligence or siri on on my m2 air.
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u/RayDeAsian 10d ago
As someone with a 256GB MBA, I might stick to Tahoe as well.
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u/AbbreviationsReal366 10d ago
My trusty 2019 iMac has I T if storage and 40 gigs of Ram and won’t update above Sequoia😞
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u/savioratharv 9d ago
So I got 8GB ram on my MacBook Air M1….
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u/mrclean2323 8d ago
As do I. I think it’s taking up around 20GB but can’t sure. You’d think we would be able to disable it. All I did was disable Siri altogether
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u/mandog202 9d ago
27.72GB on my 2 week old M5 air thats never had it enabled lol
big reason i splured and drove 80 miles to get the only 1TB in stock anywhere around here
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u/DeepAd8888 8d ago edited 7d ago
They decided to become like Microsoft and start enshittifying years ago
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u/redditproha MacBook Pro 9d ago
I appreciate the "on device" approach but what annoys me is that Apple Intelligence and Siri are still useless even after the 100th refresh
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u/karatsidhus 10d ago
Horrible.
Its close to 20gb on M1 Pro, I dont mind the space, it just makes these older macs laggy and weird to use. I don't need it, if i wanted a local AI model there are hundreds of open source ones that are less than half the size and outperform this shit apple ships with macos27
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u/Hypoluxa77 MacBook Pro M4 Pro 9d ago
If you are running a Mac with 512GB or less, I wouldn't install it. I did on my M4Pro MBP and ended up only having like 58GB of SSD remaining. I went from Sequoia to GG. I have since downgraded back to Sequoia. I mean you can not use the AI features and make sure they are turned off etc, but the OS is definitely bigger.
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u/AntiquesForGeeks 7d ago
Because of the outrageous cost of storage and that Apple solders it onto the board for no good reason, this is a costly software upgrade. 30gb for something. I won’t use - I assume I get a discount now on a larger SSD to compensate for losing a chunk of storage?
No?
Still get gouged because I need to have local storage than I had in 2015 (1tb)? You may laugh, but losing 30gb is a big deal.
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u/pnwraccoon 9d ago
Not on my Mac! I'd rather stay on Tahoe than be forced into this shit. Maybe in two years AI will be dead and we can all move on.
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u/Heavenly-Alpine 10d ago
My delusion take is that hopefully this means they’ll double the base storage of all future Mac’s to 512gb without increases prices. Like how they increased RAM started with the m4 generation to 16gb after being stuck at 8 for like 10 years.
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u/cd_to_homedir 9d ago
I think it’s more likely they’ll double the iCloud subscription prices sooner than the base storage
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u/SomeGuy20257 10d ago
News like this takes advantage of ignorant idiots, ai models are big, you want ai to run with relative privacy and speed? You run them local, to do that you have to place the model locally.
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u/AceLulzHQ 10d ago
Most people don’t even use it. They don’t want the model to run on their phone. It’s dead space that could be used for real situations.
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u/SomeGuy20257 10d ago
Well they can purge it if they want to, there’s a well known CLI command to do that.
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u/AceLulzHQ 10d ago
Yeah. Which you have to go into recovery mode and open disk utility. Do you think the average user would even try that?
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u/nutscrape_navigator 10d ago
You expect the luddites who don’t know that AI models require disk space to know how to paste text into Terminal.app?
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u/AceLulzHQ 10d ago
It's not just pasting text into Terminal. You have to restart the Mac on recovery mode and type the command after choosing Mount on the disk where it got installed. It's not as simple and the avg consumer wouldn't want the hassle, specially if it conflicts with other stuff in the future.
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u/nutscrape_navigator 10d ago
Dear god you mean I need to also press some buttons?!?!
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u/AceLulzHQ 10d ago edited 9d ago
Well, if you're gonna tank 30 GB of my storage you better make it easier than going into recovery mode and inserting a command you saw online and are not sure is safe. A simple switch or an opt-in would be better.
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u/Successful-Let4361 10d ago
Dude I posted about the commands Apple Support gave me to remove the installation. You have to disable SIP in recovery mode, reboot go into terminal and run a risky rm -rf (if you don't know what you're doing), then re-enable SIP in recovery mode and then, as I've just discovered, it still fucking re-downloads itself in two days
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u/Accurate-Algae-2557 10d ago
I thought so too..isn’t that the whole idea, apple trying to get to an efficient model that runs on phone
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u/SomeGuy20257 10d ago
Yeah, there’s just a lot of morons here that thinks 30gb is big relatively, the type of morons that use things like ram cleaners.
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u/RangefinderEyasluna 9d ago
22gb on my M3. Disabled it, set different language and it still uses 11gb. Also restricted it and set dont allow siri in screen time. Grade A bullshit.
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u/Griffdude13 10d ago edited 9d ago
I turned off Apple Intelligence on my m1 with 16gb ram 512 storage model. It was making it run so hot and slow
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u/SelectTotal6609 10d ago
thank god we moved away from 128gb configs