If you’ve been using Apple Intelligence on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you’ll have to make a bit more room to use Apple’s AI features. At the time of launch, Apple Intelligence’s minimum system requirements included 4GB of storage space, but that has increased significantly in a recent update, spotted by 9to5Mac. At the time of writing, every device that uses Apple Intelligence requires a minimum of 7GB of space.
Why Apple Intelligence needs storage space
Table of Contents
Since a lot of Apple Intelligence processing happens on-device, it needs to store data on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. The required storage space for Apple Intelligence will keep increasing as Apple adds more features to its AI portfolio. As of iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS 15.2, this is the full list of Apple Intelligence features:
-
Genmoji
-
Image Playground
-
Image Wand in the Apple Pencil tool palette
-
Writing Tools
-
Clean Up in Photos
-
Create a Memory movie in Photos
-
Natural language search in Photos
-
Notification summaries
-
Reduce Interruptions Focus
-
Intelligent Breakthrough & Silencing in Focus
-
Priority messages in Mail
-
Smart Reply in Mail and Messages
-
Summaries in Mail and Messages
-
Siri enhancements, including product knowledge, type to Siri, and more
-
ChatGPT integration within Siri and Writing Tools
The minimum storage requirements have increased thanks to the additional AI features that were launched with iOS 18.2. You can expect it to go up further in the future, if and when Apple Intelligence gets more features.
How to check how much space Apple Intelligence occupies on your iPhone, iPad, Mac
You can easily find out how much storage space Apple Intelligence is taking up on your devices. On your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > General > iPhone/iPad Storage > iOS/iPadOS. On your Mac, you can visit System Settings > General > Storage > macOS. On my Mac, Apple Intelligence had been taking up around 3.1GB until a few weeks ago, and that number has gone up to 5.5GB today.
Credit: Pranay Parab
Can I delete Apple Intelligence data from my device?
There’s no easy way to remove Apple Intelligence data from your device. It appears to take up lots of space even if you turn it off or if it’s unavailable in your iPhone’s language. Having said that, some Reddit users have reportedly discovered a hack that deletes Apple Intelligence storage data from their devices. To make it work, you need to turn off Apple Intelligence on your device first. On your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you can go to Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri and turn off Apple Intelligence. After this, if your Apple device comes close to running out of storage, it’ll automatically offload Apple Intelligence data and free up precious space.
I wish there was a way to manually delete Apple Intelligence data or delete selective components of it that I’m not using. For instance, if I turn off notification summaries or writing tools, Apple should let me delete the storage associated with those features. At the moment, the hack to free up storage is a bit extreme as it requires you to stop using AI features altogether.