It’s a MacBook Air with an M4 chip.
This ai stuff has gotten ridiculous. I didn’t ask for this and don’t want it. I want my 32 gig of storage back.
Edit: Found the instructions. Man is it complicated. They really don’t want you to turn off this monster.
Oh no my devices are just outdated enough to not support Apple Intelligence, I’m getting left behind from (checks notes)… email summaries and writing prompts in a journaling app I forgot about.
Turn off the Apple Intelligence features in System Settings. It will delete the model.
No it won’t.
I’ve done that and it still is holding onto the hard drive space.
They lied.
They lied to us!
They did not.Lol I didn’t notice you were the same user from above. Came to your defense against your accuser but it was you.Guess you meant Apple?
The models are deleted gradually (usually within an hour but some report it taking up to a day depending on how much other storage management is queued up). If you want instant deletion there is a manual process.https://apple.gadgethacks.com/how-to/how-to-remove-apple-intelligence-models-on-mac-in-macos-27/
The user above is correct. There are up to two AFM 3 Core models queued for download when you enable Apple Intelligence. When you disable it, local models are likewise queued for deletion. They are not deleted instantly. Both download and deletion are async tasks handled in the background.
The time it takes depends on how many other storage management routines are already queued. Here are a few tips to hasten that process:
1. After disabling Apple Intelligence, reboot the machine.
This will (A) clear maintenance tasks from the queue which complete more quickly pre-login, and re-queues the all remaining background storage routines based on configs which can bump the deletion task higher in the queue.
2. Open a terminal and run
sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0.This removes I/O throttling of background storage management tasks (spotlight mdstore indexing, Time Machine snapshots, etc). The setting is cleared on reboot or when running the command
sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=1.3. If you’re on AC power, open a terminal and run the command
caffeinate -ism -t 24*60*60.This disables idle, system, and disk sleep for 24 hours to ensure the computer stays awake allowing background storage management daemons to continue. You can turn this off by closing the terminal.
4. Open Settings > Network, click Details for the active connection and turn on “Low Data Mode” temporarily.
This trick is used to prevent AFM 3 Core models from being re-downloaded during manual deletion, but some users have reported it speeds up local model deletion as well. (This sounds like coincidence to me, but you can try it.)
The user above described the official supported method. I added links in a separate comment which include the alternate manual process of deletion. I would suggest using the official method first.
ETA: I don’t know what I expected.
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Ew.
I have an M1 Macbook Air running Tahoe and just left Apple Intelligence switched off. No issues. I don’t have a use case for any of the AI shit.
This has seriously made me reconsider upgrading to Golden Gate.
So send them your opinion about it. The more that complain the more likely they will make it optional.
I don’t use Mail and have no accounts configured, so I can’t get to the Settings page without setting up an account first. Would deleting the Mail app have the same effect? EDIT: Apparently you can’t delete the Mail app. SMH
I can’t seem to turn off Realistic Images in Screen Time > Contents & Privacy too.
It’s bullshit that this isn’t just one toggle like what Firefox did with their AI features.
Here is the feed back link. Let them now what you think. But be aware that is you fill your message with curse words they probably will just delete it.
I posted my displeasure about the ai on their community support forum and they immediately deleted the line. “They really don’t want you to turn their monster off. It’s like they really love their Frankenstein monster more than their customers.”
I deleted my other comment because I may not have understood the news correctly when I first read it. Macrumors goes over this here https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/23/apple-intelligence-30gb-some-macs-macos-27/
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- Buy a Purism librem 16 with anti interdiction
- Smash macbook
I always love “how do I fix X” posts because there’s always that one schmuck who comments “you buy some entirely different product instead”.
Gee. Thanks. Real helpful mate.
Got any suggestions that don’t cost thousands of dollars and take tens of hours to implement?
