A new open-source tool is making waves in the Mac community by helping users reclaim valuable storage space taken up by Apple's AI models. Called "RemoveMacAI," the command line tool disables Apple Intelligence on macOS 27, removes its downloaded models, and prevents them from being downloaded again.
In macOS 27, Apple removed the toggle to disable Apple Intelligence wholesale, and simply disabling individual features doesn't remove the models from your Mac's drive. As explained by the developer, RemoveMacAI gets around this by using a configuration profile to switch off Apple's own asset management service and remove the models.
It then configures the system so attempts to download the removed models are redirected to a closed local port, preventing them from immediately coming back. And it does all this without disabling System Integrity Protection (SIP) or manually deleting files from protected system locations, unlike some older tools have.
The tool can free up roughly 12GB of space depending on which models are present on your Mac. That said, some users are reporting cases of Apple Intelligence models having taken up a lot more space, which they've now reclaimed.
With the Apple models gone, you lose all Siri-related AI features, Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground, ChatGPT integration, summaries, smart replies, inline predictions, Photos Clean Up, Spatial Photos, and Xcode predictive completion. Even so, plenty of users appear happy to make the sacrifice to free up space, especially on non-upgradeable Macs with 256GB of storage. The profile reportedly persists across updates. And if you're wondering, dictation still works. There's also a revert command to restore everything AI-related.
The project has attracted hundreds of GitHub stars since its release last week, and there's lots of discussion on Reddit and Hacker News about the need for such a tool. Just be aware that MacRumors isn't endorsing RemoveMacAI, and anyone using it does so at their own risk.
The developer has mentioned one caveat, and it's that some of the configuration-profile restriction keys that the tool relies on were deprecated by Apple in macOS 26.4. While they still work in macOS 27.0.1, a future version could always change that. Something to keep in mind.
(Thanks, Ben!)
