RemoveMacAI: Turn Off Apple Intelligence and Delete Its Models

⏱️ Reading time: 13 min

Apple Intelligence keeps taking up space on your Mac even after you turn off each of its features in System Settings. macOS 27 removed the single switch that used to turn everything off at once, and the downloaded models (from the base model to the one that generates Genmoji) stay on disk until the system decides to delete them on its own, which can take days.

📑 En este artículo

1. TL;DR
2. What is Apple Intelligence?
3. Why being able to turn it off matters
4. How it works: on-device models and where they’re stored
5. Practical examples and how to get started with RemoveMacAI
6. Real-world use cases
7. Common mistakes and best practices
8. Comparison: RemoveMacAI vs other ways to free up space
9. Deep dive: how RemoveMacAI blocks re-downloads
10. Frequently Asked Questions
    1. Does RemoveMacAI delete anything under /System or disable System Integrity Protection?
    2. What stops working if I disable Apple’s AI features with RemoveMacAI?
    3. Does voice dictation stop working?
    4. Does a macOS update revert RemoveMacAI’s changes?
    5. Can I turn Apple Intelligence back on after disabling it with RemoveMacAI?
11. References

RemoveMacAI, a command-line tool published on GitHub, solves that problem with a single reversible command: it turns off every feature, deletes the models already downloaded, and blocks macOS from downloading them again on its own.

TL;DR

• RemoveMacAI completely turns off Apple’s AI features and deletes their on-device models with a single reversible command on macOS 27.
• removemacai status lists each feature and whether its model is still downloaded on disk.
• A configuration profile blocks the automatic re-download of the models after deleting them.
• removemacai off --keep siri turns off everything except Siri, without losing that one specific feature.
• removemacai revert restores the original settings and lets macOS download whatever it needs again.

What is Apple Intelligence?

Apple Intelligence is the set of artificial intelligence features that Apple built into macOS, iOS, and iPadOS starting in 2024, made up of language models that run on-device (on the machine itself) and others that run on Private Cloud Compute, used to summarize text, generate images, rewrite with Writing Tools, and power Siri.

The list of features is long: Siri (including the menu bar icon and “Hey Siri”), Writing Tools for rewriting text, Genmoji for creating custom emoji, Image Playground for generating images, automatic summaries in Mail, Messages, Safari, Notes and notifications, smart replies in Mail, inline text prediction, Spatial Photos, automatic Photos cleanup, and predictive code completion in Xcode. Each of these features depends on at least one model that macOS downloads and stores on disk the first time you turn it on.

Why being able to turn it off matters

The problem isn’t that this Apple AI suite exists, but that turning off a feature in Settings doesn’t delete its model. macOS 27 no longer has a single switch to turn it all off at once, so each feature gets disabled separately, and none of them frees up the space it took when it was downloaded.

This matters especially on machines with limited storage: a MacBook Air or Mac mini with 256 GB can lose non-trivial space across several accumulated models (the one that summarizes text, the one that generates images and Genmoji, the Spatial Photos one, the Photos cleanup one, and the Xcode autocomplete one), even if you never deliberately use those features. The way to measure how much they take up on your machine is to run removemacai status, which lists each feature along with the disk status of its model.

How it works: on-device models and where they’re stored

Each Apple Intelligence feature requests its model from an internal Apple service the first time you use it, downloads it once, and leaves it cached on disk for later. Disabling the feature in System Settings only turns off access to it: the model stays on disk, ready for the feature to use again if you re-enable it.

The difference between an on-device model and one that runs on Private Cloud Compute matters for disk space. Anything that runs in Apple’s cloud takes up nothing on your Mac, but Apple designed this suite so that the simplest tasks (summarizing a paragraph, generating a Genmoji, correcting text) run on-device by default, prioritizing privacy and latency over storage savings. That’s why the base model and several specialized models stay cached locally even on a Mac that never sent a single query to the cloud.

RemoveMacAI intervenes at two points in that circuit. First, it installs a configuration profile that applies Apple’s restriction keys for each feature and forces the settings for the ones that don’t have a restriction key of their own. Second, it asks Apple’s asset service to delete the models already downloaded, and redirects each one’s download URL to a closed local port so macOS can’t download them again on its own.

flowchart TD
    A["System Settings"] --> B["Apple Intelligence and Siri"]
    B --> C["Apple asset service"]
    C --> D[("On-device models on disk")]
    B --> E["Private Cloud Compute"]
    subgraph macOS
    B
    C
    D
    end

The key detail: System Integrity Protection (SIP) stays active the whole time, and RemoveMacAI doesn’t modify any file under /System. Every change happens through mechanisms Apple already exposes for device management (MDM), not through patches to the system.

Practical examples and how to get started with RemoveMacAI

RemoveMacAI only runs on Apple Silicon: there’s no version for Intel-based Macs, Windows, or Linux, because this Apple AI suite doesn’t exist there either. Before installing anything you need three things: a Mac with an Apple Silicon chip, macOS 27 installed (27.0.1 requires version 0.2.3 or later of the tool), and administrator permissions to approve the configuration profile the system will prompt you for.

The recommended install method is the official script, which downloads the latest release, verifies its SHA-256 checksum, and runs it from a temporary directory without installing anything permanent:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/omlahore/RemoveMacAI/main/install.sh | bash

If you prefer Homebrew, the project also publishes a tap in a single line: brew install omlahore/tap/removemacai && removemacai.

Before touching anything, it’s a good idea to check what’s installed:

$ removemacai status
Apple Intelligence: enabled

Feature                          Model on disk
Siri                              downloaded
Writing Tools                     downloaded
Genmoji                            downloaded
Image Playground                   downloaded
Summaries (Mail, Messages...)      downloaded
Xcode predictive autocomplete      not downloaded

The actual output varies depending on which features you’ve used at some point: only the models your Mac has downloaded at some time show up as “downloaded.” The exact size of each one depends on the model and the macOS version, so there’s no fixed number that applies to every machine.

To see what would change without applying anything yet:

removemacai off --dry-run

The command prints the list of features that would be turned off and the models that would be deleted, without touching the system. It’s the step worth running before the first real run.

To turn everything off at once:

removemacai

Without arguments, the command shows the current status, asks for confirmation, opens System Preferences for you to approve the configuration profile (macOS always requires that manual approval for profiles), and then deletes the models.

If you use a specific feature, like Siri by voice, you can leave it out of the general shutdown:

removemacai off --keep siri

To see what names --keep accepts in your installed version:

removemacai features

And if you change your mind, a single command undoes everything:

removemacai revert

Reverting restores the previous settings: macOS downloads again any model a feature needs the next time you use it.

Real-world use cases

Anyone who buys a Mac mini or MacBook Air in its smallest storage configuration (many models still ship with 256 GB) notices every gigabyte that goes to models they never asked to use. For those machines, running removemacai status before filling up the disk with real projects is a quick, free check.

Developers testing AI tools in the terminal sometimes run into Xcode trying to use its own predictive autocomplete at the same time as an external assistant, duplicating suggestions. Turning off just that feature with removemacai off --keep siri,writing-tools avoids the clash without losing Siri or Writing Tools.

Those managing several Macs in a small office, without a corporate MDM in place, use RemoveMacAI as a manual stand-in for a restriction policy: they apply the same profile to every new machine before handing it over, instead of touching Settings feature by feature on each one.

Those preparing a disk image to clone across a fleet of machines prefer to run RemoveMacAI before cloning, so they don’t copy multi-gigabyte models onto every new Mac.

Common mistakes and best practices

The most common mistake is installing the tool on an Intel-based Mac: RemoveMacAI requires Apple Silicon because this Apple AI suite doesn’t run on those machines either, so there’s nothing to uninstall there.

Another mistake is installing on macOS 27.0 and expecting it to work the same way on 27.0.1: the project notes that this subversion needs 0.2.3 or later of the tool, so it’s worth checking the version number before running the script on a freshly updated Mac.

Confusing “model deleted” with “space freed immediately” is another frequent stumble. The asset service releases the models instantly, but macOS deletes them from disk on its own schedule, so System Settings > General > Storage can keep counting those models under Apple Intelligence for a while after you run the command.

A less obvious gotcha: a process named “Siri” keeps running after you disable everything. On macOS 27 the Spotlight window runs under that process name, and some system services stay loaded because System Integrity Protection protects them; they’re not leftovers RemoveMacAI failed to clean up.

Running a script with curl | bash raises reasonable security concerns. RemoveMacAI mitigates that risk in two ways: the installer downloads the binary from the latest release and verifies its SHA-256 checksum before running it from a temporary directory, without leaving anything installed permanently, and every release carries a GitHub Actions provenance attestation you can verify with gh attestation verify before trusting the binary.

Good practice: always run removemacai off --dry-run before the real shutdown, and keep a handy list of the features you want to preserve with --keep instead of turning everything off and re-enabling them one by one afterward.

⚠️ Heads up: turning off Writing Tools, Visual Intelligence, or Calendar’s natural language editing also turns off any third-party app that relies on Apple’s Foundation Models framework or the “Use Model” action in Shortcuts. If an app like that stops responding, check first whether it uses those models before hunting for a bug in the app.

Comparison: RemoveMacAI vs other ways to free up space

Deep dive: how RemoveMacAI blocks re-downloads

The least obvious piece of the design is the port redirection. When you delete a model, the corresponding feature requests it again as soon as you need it, unless something prevents that download from completing. The configuration profile RemoveMacAI installs redirects each deleted model’s download URL to a local port with nothing listening on the other end: the request fails silently and the model never comes back.

That mechanism comes from pared, an earlier project by a developer identified as 4evy, who first mapped out the asset service, the model sets, and several of the restriction keys that RemoveMacAI later automates. RemoveMacAI takes that reverse-engineering work and packages it into a CLI with a verified installer and releases signed by GitHub Actions with provenance attestation: you can confirm a downloaded binary comes from the repository’s source code with gh attestation verify removemacai-darwin-arm64.tar.gz -R omlahore/RemoveMacAI.

sequenceDiagram
    participant U as User
    participant R as RemoveMacAI
    participant S as System Settings
    participant A as Asset service
    U->>R: removemacai
    R->>S: installs the configuration profile
    S-->>U: asks to approve the profile
    R->>A: requests deletion of downloaded models
    A-->>R: releases the models
    Note over R,A: the profile blocks re-downloading

Removing the profile (which is what removemacai revert does) undoes the redirection and restores the previous settings. From there, macOS downloads each model normally again the next time a feature requests it.

stateDiagram
    [*] --> Enabled
    Enabled --> Disabled: removemacai off
    Disabled --> Enabled: removemacai revert
    Disabled --> Disabled: removemacai off --keep siri

The project being MIT-licensed and open source matters beyond the license itself: anyone can read exactly which restriction keys the profile applies and which URLs it redirects, instead of blindly trusting a closed binary that touches system settings.

Your next step: run removemacai status on your Apple Silicon Mac to see which features already have downloaded models before deciding whether to turn them off.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does RemoveMacAI delete anything under /System or disable System Integrity Protection?

No. The project states that System Integrity Protection remains active at all times and that no file under /System is modified directly; the changes are applied through a configuration profile and calls to Apple’s asset service.

What stops working if I disable Apple’s AI features with RemoveMacAI?

The listed features stop working (Siri, Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground, summaries, smart replies, text prediction, Spatial Photos, Photos cleanup, and Xcode autocomplete), plus any third-party app that uses Apple’s Foundation Models framework or the “Use Model” action in Shortcuts, as well as Visual Intelligence and Calendar’s natural language editing.

Does voice dictation stop working?

No. Dictation is a separate setting and its speech recognition models aren’t touched.

Does a macOS update revert RemoveMacAI’s changes?

No. The profile, including the download block, persists across system updates according to the project’s documentation.

Can I turn Apple Intelligence back on after disabling it with RemoveMacAI?

Yes, with removemacai revert. The command removes the configuration profile, restores the original settings, and lets macOS download again any model a feature needs.

References

• RemoveMacAI on GitHub: official repository with the README, changelog, and source code for the tool.
• Apple Intelligence, Apple’s official page: official description of the features and hardware requirements.
• Apple Intelligence on Wikipedia: historical context on the launch and evolution of the suite.
• GitHub Documentation: general reference on build attestations and GitHub Actions used to sign RemoveMacAI’s releases.

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Featured image: Foto de Adrian Regeci en Unsplash