Apple No Longer Hiding Apple Intelligence Storage Space Info in macOS 15.4

With the second beta of macOS 15.4 that was released earlier in March, Apple changed System Settings to hide how much local storage space Apple Intelligence takes up on a Mac.

Apple Intelligence Storage Space Feature 2
Making the change led to accusations that Apple was trying to hide the size of ‌Apple Intelligence‌, and so with the fourth macOS 15.4 beta that came out today, Apple made ‌Apple Intelligence‌'s storage requirements easy to find once again.

To see ‌Apple Intelligence‌ storage space, you can go to System Settings > General > Storage and click the info button next to the macOS listing. That brings up a popup that shows the version of macOS installed and the storage space taken up by ‌Apple Intelligence‌ and it's the same way that System Settings works in the current release version of macOS Sequoia, 15.3.2.

It is possible that the missing ‌Apple Intelligence‌ storage feature in the earlier macOS 15.4 beta was a bug. Users who had System Integrity Protection (SIP) disabled were able to see the information without issue, and Apple appeared to have made the ‌Apple Intelligence‌ storage assets unavailable to anyone with SIP enabled.

For reference, SIP protects the Mac by preventing unauthorized code from being run, and it can only be turned off in Recovery Mode. Disabling SIP is typically only used by developers testing apps, and most users always have it on. Given that Apple returned the ‌Apple Intelligence‌ storage space listing to all users, it was perhaps something unintentional, though it remains unclear.

Apple says that ‌Apple Intelligence‌ can consume up to 7GB of storage space on a Mac, though it appears to be taking up more space on some Macs in ‌macOS Sequoia‌ 15.4. ‌Apple Intelligence‌ requires dedicated storage space because it downloads machine learning models and assets to Apple devices so that some functions can be run locally.

Disabling ‌Apple Intelligence‌ is the only way to keep the feature from using up space on a Mac.

Related Roundup: macOS Sequoia
Related Forum: macOS Sequoia

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Top Rated Comments

turbineseaplane Avatar
5 hours ago at 01:29 pm
Nice

All it needs is a "delete Apple Intelligence" button right there also, and we are all wrapped up here
Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sw1tcher Avatar
5 hours ago at 01:33 pm

Disabling Apple Intelligence is the only way to keep the feature from using up space on a Mac.
Until Apple decides to automatically enable Apple Intelligence for everyone, turning it into an opt-out feature. And then when you install any sort of OS update, it will re-enable Apple Intelligence again.

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/03/11/ios-18-3-2-apple-intelligence-auto-on/
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
CSM2000 Avatar
5 hours ago at 01:59 pm
How are the 7GB of space utilized by A.I. recovered once Apple Intelligence is turned off? I'd much rather have the space than A.I. capabilities.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ronno Avatar
4 hours ago at 02:41 pm
Apple turning into 1990s microsoft right here
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
CalMin Avatar
5 hours ago at 01:52 pm
Hmm... so they addressed needing more than 8GB RAM for Apple Intelligence. When will they start us on more than 256GB SSD?
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AppliedMicro Avatar
4 hours ago at 02:43 pm

Can you actually delete the files and recover the space yet?

Just let me recover my space Apple.
How else is Timmy getting his sweet upsell revenue, when they've begun shipping 16GB RAM as standard?
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)