RemoveMacAI Reclaims 12GB From macOS 27 Through a Blocked Port

A free command-line tool called RemoveMacAI, written by developer Om Lahore, turns off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and deletes the models behind it, which AppleInsider puts at about 12GB. The reason it exists is that macOS 27 has no single switch for the feature and keeps the models on disk after the individual features are turned off.

The project page shows more than 1,700 stars, 34 forks and two open issues, under an MIT licence. AppleInsider covered it on Oct. 5. Its useful finding is the gap: Siri can be switched off in System Settings, but the settings do not offer a way to delete the stored model data.

Stars are not adoption, and the same week brought other fast-rising repositories, such as OpenCut at 92,200 stars and Impeccable's design detector, where the open issues told a different story from the star count. Here the open issues number two.

What the tool does to a Mac

The README describes three mechanisms. A configuration profile applies Apple's own restriction settings, which switch off Siri, Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground and predictive text completion. The tool then removes the downloaded models through Apple's asset service, without touching system files. Last, the same profile "redirects the download of each removed model to a closed local port, so macOS does not download it again."

The README's FAQ says the profile, including the download block, persists across OS updates. Neither source says whether a later macOS 27 point release will honour it.

Removed models	Features lost
Apple Intelligence foundation models	Visual Intelligence
Image generation and Genmoji models	Calendar natural-language editing
Spatial Photos and Photos Clean Up models	Apps built on the Foundation Models framework
Xcode code completion models	Siri AI, Writing Tools, Image Playground

Two sizes for the same models

The 12GB figure is not the only one in circulation. A Tom's Guide headline for the same problem says Apple Intelligence can take up to 30GB on macOS 27, and The Terminal could not retrieve that article's body to see how it was measured. The README itself gives no total: sizes the asset service cannot report are listed as "unknown", and the removemacai status command prints what each model occupies on a given Mac. Run that before trusting either number.

The friction is in the install

The quick install is curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/omlahore/RemoveMacAI/main/install.sh | bash, which runs a remote script with your privileges. A Homebrew route exists, brew install omlahore/tap/removemacai. Either way, macOS makes the user approve the configuration profile by hand in System Settings, which is the step that cannot be scripted away. The tool offers --dry-run to preview changes and --keep to preserve chosen features, and removemacai revert undoes the changes.

The failure case matters more than the install. If model removal fails, the README says the tool exits with status 1 and leaves the configuration profile active, so the download block stays in place with the models still on disk. The Storage pane may also keep listing Apple Intelligence until macOS finishes deleting the files, and some processes named Siri keep running.

The tool needs an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 27; version 26 and earlier are unsupported. The README credits an earlier tool, 4evy's "pared", with first mapping the asset service. The Terminal read the README and the coverage and did not run the script. Anyone who does should read install.sh first and remember that the revert path lets macOS download the models again.