Apple Intelligence Technology Takes up Much More Memory on These Devices Than the Company Promised.
Apple’s latest updates are all about artificial intelligence—more specifically, Apple Intelligence. After updating to iOS 27 and macOS 27 Golden Gate, Apple will offer you the chance to try out AI-powered Siri and other new Apple Intelligence features (provided your iPhone supports Apple AI features). But whether you use the new AI-powered Siri regularly or frequently skip new AI features, Apple Intelligence is taking up space on your device—possibly requiring more memory than you intended.
I admit, I didn’t pay much attention to this when I updated my iPhone and Mac to the latest versions. I tried Siri AI, set up Liquid Glass , and went back to pretty much the same things I was doing before the update. But as soon as I saw the headlines about how much space Apple Intelligence was taking up in these new updates, I wanted to see for myself. And wow, the headlines were true: on my iPhone 17 Pro, Apple Intelligence takes up 20.65 GB. On my MacBook Pro M3, it’s a whopping 30 GB.
These figures can vary by device: for example, on my iMac with an M1 processor, only 13.88 GB is allocated to Apple Intelligence. But that’s still a significant portion of my total storage. Anyone with a small SSD knows how precious every gigabyte is, and over 30 GB for Apple Intelligence is a lot . Moreover, it’s often more space than Apple’s own metrics indicate: as MacRumors notes , Apple states that Apple Intelligenceshould take up a maximum of 14 GB of storage , and on some devices, even less. So why does my MacBook Pro allocate more than twice as much space to Apple’s AI?
Why does Apple Intelligence take up so much space on iPhone and Mac?
I can’t answer why Apple Intelligence takes up so much more memory than Apple claims. But I can explain why Apple claims its AI should take up to 14GB on some devices: Apple Intelligence is designed to run on-device whenever possible. While Apple offloads some tasks to its private cloud computing platform, the company wants its AI models to run on your iPhone or Mac whenever possible. This protects your privacy, as none of your data needs to leave your device to complete a task—though Apple claims that private cloud computing also protects your privacy throughout the process.
However, for this reason, your iPhone or Mac will download Apple Intelligence models directly to the device so that it can run on-device processes when appropriate. If you have a newer or more powerful device that supports more resource-intensive Apple AI features, such as personalized Siri voices, you may need to store more Apple Intelligence data on the device to run these processes—up to 14 GB on some devices. However, it’s unclear why Apple Intelligence takes up more than double that amount of memory on some devices, such as my MacBook Pro.
Check how much memory Apple Intelligence is using on your devices.
Checking how much space Apple Intelligence is using on your device is fairly easy, although Apple doesn’t make it obvious. To start, go to System Preferences > General > Storage (macOS) or Settings > General > iPhone Storage (iOS). Scroll down and select “macOS (i)” or “iOS,” respectively. Here, you’ll see your system storage allocation, including the amount for Apple Intelligence.
There is no solution at the moment.
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to instruct iOS or macOS to remove some Apple Intelligence models while leaving others intact, or to run all processes through private cloud storage. Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be a reliable way to disable Apple Intelligence on a device running iOS 27 or macOS 27. The closest option I’ve found is to disable Siri ( Settings or System Preferences > Siri > Turn Off Siri ), but while this disables many Apple Intelligence options, I still see the models taking up space on my device, even after a reboot. Perhaps Apple will fix this in a future software update—hopefully within iOS 27.2.