RemoveMacAI disables Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and deletes its model files

What the tool does

According to the project's GitHub repository, which surfaced on the Hacker News front page on 4 October 2026, macOS 27 no longer ships a single switch for Apple Intelligence, and the model files the system downloads stay on disk even after every feature is turned off. RemoveMacAI, an open-source utility by developer omlahore, is built to close that gap: it disables the full feature set, deletes the downloaded models, and stops macOS from fetching them again. Every change it makes can be undone.

The list of features it turns off is extensive. Siri goes, along with "Hey Siri" and its menu bar icon, as do Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground, the ChatGPT extension, Mail smart replies, inline text predictions, Spatial Photos, Photos Clean Up, Xcode predictive code completion, and AI summaries in Mail, Messages, Safari, Notes and notifications. The deleted models cover the Apple Intelligence foundation models plus the generators for images and Genmoji, Spatial Photos, Photos Clean Up and Xcode code completion.

How it works

The tool avoids modifying the system directly. Instead, it installs a configuration profile — which macOS requires the user to approve in System Settings — that applies Apple's own restriction keys for Apple Intelligence and force-sets the options that lack such keys. Model deletion goes through Apple's asset service, the same delivery mechanism that put the files there in the first place. System Integrity Protection remains enabled and nothing under /System is touched.

To prevent macOS from re-downloading what was removed, the profile points each model's download URL at a closed local port. Pull the profile back out and the previous settings return; macOS will then re-download a model whenever a feature actually needs it. The repository states that the tool makes no network requests and collects no data, and that the profile, including the download block, survives macOS updates.

Installation and usage

Two install paths are documented. A one-line curl-to-bash installer fetches the latest release, verifies its SHA-256 checksum and runs it from a temporary directory without installing anything on the machine. Alternatively, Homebrew users can run brew install omlahore/tap/removemacai. Releases are built from their tags by GitHub Actions and carry build provenance attestations, which can be checked with the gh attestation verify command.

The binary shows current state and asks for confirmation before changing anything. Alongside the default mode there are subcommands for viewing per-feature status and on-disk model sizes (status), keeping selected features enabled (off --keep), previewing changes (off --dry-run), undoing everything (revert) and listing the feature names the tool accepts (features).

What breaks and what survives

Dictation keeps working, the project's FAQ says, because it is a separate setting and its speech models are left alone. Two quirks are worth knowing: the Storage pane in System Settings can keep counting the models until macOS finishes deleting the files on its own schedule, and a process named Siri keeps running because, on macOS 27, the Spotlight window runs under that name.

The real trade-off is compatibility. According to the documentation, apps that rely on Apple's on-device models through the Foundation Models framework, or the "Use Model" action in Shortcuts, lose that capability, as do Visual Intelligence and natural-language editing in Calendar. The tool requires Apple silicon and macOS 27 — it was tested on 27.0, and version 0.2.3 or later is needed on 27.0.1 — and it does not support macOS 26 or earlier. The author credits 4evy's pared as the prior work that first mapped the asset service, the model sets and several settings keys. The project is MIT-licensed.

Why it matters

RemoveMacAI is interesting less as a disk-space utility and more as a dispute over control. Apple shipped on-device AI that consumes storage on supported Macs, then made it harder to decline in macOS 27 by removing the single off switch and leaving the models on disk regardless. This tool rebuilds that opt-out using Apple's own management plumbing — configuration profiles and the asset service — rather than a jailbreak-style hack, and because it is fully reversible and persists across OS updates it is a practical option rather than just a proof of concept. The caveats are real: piping a remote script into bash is a trust decision even with checksum verification, and Apple could change the underlying keys or asset behaviour in a future release. For now, though, it demonstrates that when a vendor removes an off switch, the community can often rebuild one.