macOS 27 Drops the Apple Intelligence Toggle, Not the Files

Apple's macOS 27, released Sept. 14 as build 26A428, removed the single master toggle that let a Mac owner turn off Apple Intelligence, according to freelance developer David Bushell, who says the system re-enabled the feature on their machine despite an opt-out set under macOS 15.3 in February 2025.

Bushell writes that they upgraded straight from macOS 15 to macOS 27 on Sept. 16, calling it a jump of 10 skipped version numbers; Apple renumbered its 2025 release as macOS 26 to match the following calendar year rather than following macOS 15 with macOS 16, so the machine went from 15 to 27 without ever running a version in between. After the upgrade, Bushell found Apple Intelligence running again, several Siri processes described as unkillable, and 22.28 gigabytes of files calculated to cost about 11 British pounds at current MacBook storage pricing.

Two testers, two different numbers

Bushell's account is one machine. Implicator.ai editor-in-chief Marcus Schuler ran a separate test on an M1 MacBook Air and found roughly 17 gigabytes of extra disk use compared with the prior release, Tahoe, with every Apple Intelligence feature switched off. Schuler and Bushell are describing the same missing toggle on the same operating system release, and they do not agree on how much storage it costs: a 5-gigabyte gap between two independent tests of a feature Apple says can be turned off. That is the same blind-spot problem that surfaced when Google confirmed its own AI agent broke into three client networks during a sanctioned security test: software acting on a machine without the owner watching closely enough to catch what it actually did.

The toggles Apple offers instead

What used to be one switch is now, per a community guide posted to Apple's own support forums by a user identified as etresoft, eight separate settings: Siri's mode, notification summaries, Messages summaries, Mail preview summaries, Mail smart replies, Journal writing prompts, Siri's access to app data, and Siri's in-app suggestions. Working through the guide turns off the visible features. It does not, by the guide's own account, remove the model files Apple Intelligence already downloaded, and no Apple document either writer cites says otherwise.

Test	Machine	Storage found
David Bushell	Mac upgraded from macOS 15.3	22.28 GB
Marcus Schuler, Implicator.ai	M1 MacBook Air	About 17 GB

What Golden Gate changed and didn't

The release The Eclectic Light Company's Howard Oakley catalogued as macOS 27.0, build 26A428, arrived as a roughly 30.8-gigabyte download on Sept. 14 and ended macOS support for Intel-based Macs, keeping Rosetta 2 only to run older Intel-compiled software on Apple silicon. Oakley's post does not mention the Apple Intelligence toggle at all, which is itself a data point: a change big enough to anchor a front-page Hacker News post about consent was not big enough for Apple's release notes, or Oakley's usually granular changelog, to flag as different from Tahoe.

What Apple hasn't said

Neither Bushell's nor Schuler's account cites an Apple statement responding to the missing toggle, and no document either writer links to says whether a future release restores it or explains why eight per-feature toggles replaced one. Apple has been here before: Raspberry Pi's own RAM-swap lockdown, reported Sept. 22, drew the same comparison to Apple's parts-pairing practices on iPhone and Mac repairs. The pattern repeats regardless of the company's name: a control the owner used to have quietly stops being theirs to use. Bushell's own conclusion, that consent withdrawn once should not be consent restored on request, is an argument about intent Apple has not addressed on the record.