A new open-source tool is going viral over its promise to let users who aren’t interested in Apple Intelligence reclaim 12GB or more of storage on their Macs. Here are the details.
Like many companies adding AI tools and models across their platforms, Apple has faced criticism for features that take up storage space some users consider unnecessary.
While Apple Intelligence required up to 7GB of storage on macOS 26, that figure has increased significantly on macOS 27, with Apple now saying its latest models can require up to 14GB on newer Macs.
In response to this, indie developer Om Lahore published a project called RemoveMacAI on GitHub late last week, which promises to “turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and remove its downloaded models.”
As Lahore explains, his tool enables a configuration profile that applies Apple’s own restriction keys to turn off Apple Intelligence features, while also using the company’s asset service to remove downloaded models and prevent macOS from downloading them again.
He also explains exactly what the tool removes, which features it disables, and what users can expect after running it:
Features turned off: Siri (including “Hey Siri” and the menu bar icon), Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground, the ChatGPT extension, summaries in Mail, Messages, Safari, Notes and notifications, Mail smart replies, inline text predictions, Spatial Photos, Photos Clean Up and Xcode predictive code completion.
Models removed: the Apple Intelligence foundation models and the models for image generation and Genmoji, Spatial Photos, Photos Clean Up and Xcode code completion.
What stops working? The features listed above, apps that use Apple’s on-device models (the Foundation Models framework and the Use Model action in Shortcuts), Visual Intelligence and natural-language editing in Calendar.
Lahore notes that dictation still works after running RemoveMacAI, as it “is a separate setting, and its speech models are not removed.”
Finally, he adds that the entire process can be reversed, with full details and instructions available here.
While part of the outcry over how much storage Apple Intelligence takes up on the Mac appears to be the same knee-jerk reaction against anything AI-related, there is a legitimate argument to be made for users with limited internal storage, particularly on 256GB Macs, where reclaiming 12GB or more can make a meaningful difference.
There is also a broader question of basic control over one’s own operating system, as users who have no interest in Apple Intelligence should arguably have a straightforward way to turn it off completely and recover the storage its models occupy, just as they can with other apps and certain optional parts of the system.
That said, there is no telling whether Apple will attempt to get the project removed from GitHub, or change the underlying mechanisms in macOS to make Apple Intelligence models harder to remove.
Likewise, there is no way to know how disabling or removing these components could affect macOS itself going forward, or even third-party apps that increasingly rely on Apple’s models to provide basic functionality.
While RemoveMacAI is open source and does not require disabling System Integrity Protection, it still relies on configuration profiles, restriction keys, and system services that Apple could change at any time.
That means a future macOS update could render parts of the tool ineffective, or potentially leave users dealing with unexpected behavior until the project is updated.
For now, anyone considering RemoveMacAI should understand that this is an unofficial third-party tool making system-level changes, and should be comfortable with the way it works.
To be completely clear, RemoveMacAI seems like a well-intentioned open-source project aimed at giving Mac users more autonomy and control over what runs on their computers and how their storage is used. It’s just impossible to know whether Apple will view it the same way.
To check out RemoveMacAI on GitHub, follow this link.
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Marcus Mendes is a Brazilian tech podcaster and journalist who has been closely following Apple since the mid-2000s.
He began covering Apple news in Brazilian media in 2012 and later broadened his focus to the wider tech industry, hosting a daily podcast for seven years.
