Apple publishes guide to disabling Apple Intelligence features across Mac
Support document details scattered settings to turn off AI features, prompting criticism of confusing interface design.
What to know
- Apple Intelligence controls are scattered across System Settings, individual app menus, and Screen Time parental controls, making them difficult for non-parents to find.
- Users report confusing toggle behavior and inability to recover disk space consumed by pre-installed models they don't use.
- No global killswitch exists; disabling all features requires navigating up to eight different apps with 5-6 steps each.
The dispute Whether the core problem is poor UX design (scattered controls) versus the fundamental lack of desire for Apple Intelligence features altogether. · positions read across 30 posts and comments
Apple's control placement is fundamentally poorly designed and scattered illogically across the system.
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“Clearly, nobody at Apple is thinking globally about this stuff. If you're not a parent, and have broader concerns about AI, you'd never even think of looking for these options where they are.”
pdpi · Hacker News ↗
Users want a single global toggle to disable all Apple Intelligence features at once and recover disk space.
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“Apple, we want one global killswitch and a way to free disk space occupied by unused models.”
wartywhoa23 · Hacker News ↗
The quality of Apple Intelligence features themselves is poor and produces irrelevant suggestions.
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“The thing that's weird about Apple's "Intelligence" features is how dumb they are. I messaged one of my kids yesterday that the pizza I made was ready and that I was out in the backyard with our dogs. Genmoji (or whatever it's called) then…”
strictnein · Hacker News ↗
Apple Software maker
How it unfolded 3 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlespostscomments
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Users demand global killswitch and disk space recovery for unused models
Multiple commenters expressed frustration about inability to easily disable all features at once and requested the ability to reclaim disk space occupied by pre-installed Apple Intelligence models they do not intend to use. One user reported having to manually disable features every time their M5 Mac starts up.
“Apple, we want one global killswitch and a way to free disk space occupied by unused models.”
— wartywhoa23 -
If you want to do this on iOS I got it to completely delete Apple Intelligence data listed in the iOS settings. My iOS install is now 15.57gb.Instructions:1. Change Siri to a different language than your phone (can be Australian or UK English or Canada if you have set to US English or similar)2. Setup Screen Time content restrictions. Restrict…
2 more of the top 3 · 24 posts in this stretch
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P
This is so ridiculous, and on top of all this stuff there doesn't seem to be any way to turn off the infuriating iChat (yes I still call it that) suggested replies feature. https:// support.apple.com/guide/mac-he lp/turn-restrict-access-apple-intelligence-mchlb2e44f94/mac
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I followed this guide[0] (with hints from this issue[1]) to recover 16+ GB. It's ridiculous that one has to go to such lengths, but I was not willing to give up 16% of my free space for models I will never use.[0] https://github.com/tejyash/delete-apple-intelligence-macos [1]
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Hacker News users criticize scattered and confusing control placement
Commenters on Hacker News complained about the fragmented location of Apple Intelligence toggles across multiple menus and apps, with particular frustration about non-obvious placement in Screen Time settings meant for parental controls. Users reported difficulty discovering toggles and questioned Apple's design decisions.
“Clearly, nobody at Apple is thinking globally about this stuff. If you're not a parent, and have broader concerns about AI, you'd never even think of looking for these options where they are.”
— pdpi -
Clearly, nobody at Apple is thinking globally about this stuff.If you have kids, "Screen Time" is a reasonable enough name for the place where parental controls live.If you work under the assumption that AI features are OK in general, but potentially problematic around kids in particular, parental controls are a reasonable enough place to put…
2 more of the top 3 · 5 posts in this stretch
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The thing that's weird about Apple's "Intelligence" features is how dumb they are. I messaged one of my kids yesterday that the pizza I made was ready and that I was out in the backyard with our dogs. Genmoji (or whatever it's called) then decided to suggest that I make a new Emoji with pizzas in a yard.It's great that they're on device and all…
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Is it possible to block Apple Intelligence from sending data over the Internet via Little Snitch? I would assume it is, but I'm not sure if anything significant has changed in macOS 27 that makes this impossible now. I don't really mind the local features - I'd rather they stay disabled, but it's not the end of the world - but I really don't want…
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Apple publishes Apple Intelligence disable guide for Mac
Apple's support pages published instructions for turning off Apple Intelligence features on macOS, including Siri AI, message and notification summarization, smart replies, and voicemail suggestions. The guide directs users to disable features through System Settings, individual app menus, and Screen Time parental controls.
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first by HN Best, 2d ago · also HN Frontpage
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first by Neowin, 16h ago
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This applies to MacOS 26.On iOS 27, it looks like changing the settings for eight different apps taking 5 or 6 steps each.
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What people are saying 17 voices from 2 sites · best of 30 · verbatim
- Can Apple Intelligence data be blocked from leaving the Mac via third-party firewall tools like Little Snitch on macOS 27?
- What does toggling 'Image creation' on or off in Content & Privacy Restrictions actually mean—does on mean enabled or restricted?
- Yesterday
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Apple: ‘Turn Off and Restrict Access to Apple Intelligence Features on Mac’ https:// pxlnv.com/linklog/apple-intell igence-features-mac/
- Sep 22
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I don't know about Macs, but under iOS/iPadOS you can set the Siri language to somewhere Siri is unsupported (e.g. Russia) to get back about 15 gigabytes of storage. Also when you set it to Russia, Safari Reader's gigantic "summarize" button disappears so that's another bonus.
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Mighty bold to assume that I'd enabled Siri in the first place. On the phone, probably personal preference and use cases, but why would you even have Siri on a Mac?
- Sep 21
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"Turn off and restrict access to Apple Intelligence features on Mac"That title in itself is a good indicator of how they think of consent. If instead it was:"Turn on and enable access to Apple Intelligence features on Mac"I suspect there would be far less anger from the users.
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MacOS GG didn't fit on my 16gb USB drives for a clean reinstall so I decided to upgrade from Tahoe and do a clean wipe afterwards, expecting that this leaves me with a clean GG install. But guess what, after wiping I was back on Tahoe after spending hours updating..
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When I hear a discussion among peers about Apple AI and security I remind them of this:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38783112Apple's reputation of being highly secure was shattered by Operation Triangulation. This complex back door allowed the hacker the ability to utilize the on-device AI to sift through data.
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The Log4J vulnerability stressed the importance of avoiding logging passwords and keys. I think the newest Log4J will be about privacy, where PII is regularly exposed and instantly searchable by anyone who wants to know. I actively disable Apple Intelligence because they share my data with numerous 3rd parties with self-certified privacy…
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I wanted to like Siri AI, but it does not really do anything that I need at the moment.I was hoping Siri AI could help more in the GUI automation world, but it seems that is not the case.For example, I was hoping Siri AI could create a Shortcut that would clear/dismiss all notification banners. Nope, it can’t even access nor see notifications.I…
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I don't know this for sure, but I would also guess that simply not singing into your iCloud account on the Mac is easier and would work just as well.(I have a Macbook that I use for various things. Other than lack of access to the Apple Store, I don't feel like I'm missing anything from not having an iCloud account.)
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It's a common pattern in Apple products. They make it hard to turn off settings they really don't want you to turn off.Another example is advertising. Apple made it easy for you to turn off advertising tracking for non-Apple things.Apple made it very confusing to turn off advertising tracking for Apple things, including having a different setting…
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> disk spaceI honestly do not understand what the 28GB Tahoe update contained. Like, I cannot imagine what all the code does. It'd take a lifetime to actually go through it all, and yet, here I am just using the same programs I did before it, just with rounder corners and some other pretty things. Actually wait, fewer programs, because some things…
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Even worse, once you're there, you toggle _on_ "Content & Privacy", and then what?What does the toggle on for "Image creation" mean? Is that now restricted? Or is toggle off mean it is restricted?
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Absolutely 100%. Now I'm very biased against this "AI" stuff in general, but even fans of "AI" can't want this, right? I mean I know some people who are heavy "AI" users and they all either have a setup with Cursor/Codex/Zed/VSCode/whatever or their preferred local model, they'd never ever want to use "whatever Apple happens to ship with the OS"…
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I would never have figured out the toggle for writing tools is in `Settings -> Screen Time -> Content & Privacy Restrictions -> Siri -> Writing Assistance`
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I want the disk space taken from the models back.I will never touch this garbage and would rather use the disk space I purchased to be used for my purposes, not the industry's pointless fad bubble endeavors.
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It's really frustrating that there is no ability to reclaim the drive space in MacOS 27, especially on Macbooks with M1 or M2 chips that can barely use the models. Another great sign of how the OS is deeply on fire IMO.
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Funny how Apple has reached the crapware maturity level that Microsoft users are quite familiar with: After first boot, go through a long list of things to deactivate so that one can experience at least some feeling of agency and privacy when using your own hardware.