How to remove AI features to reclaim SSD storage on Mac mini?

You cannot simply delete the AI features of macOS 27 Golden Gate. The AI features are installed as part of macOS. With Golden Gate, Apple removed the ability to simply toggle off Apple Intelligence, because it is more tightly integrated into macOS.

The Apple Intelligence features on my installation of macOS 27 take up ~35 GB of space.

You can check that on your own Mac in System Settings > General > Storage, and click the (i) next to the space taken by macOS near the bottom.

Note that "System Data" is not Apple Intelligence or the local LLMs, rather they are files that Spotlight cannot assign to a specific category like Documents or Applications. Examples include Outlook attachments, Cloud storage caches, and Time Machine snapshots. System Data will also decrease over the next couple of days as macOS finishes indexing and analyzing your data.

Here are some steps to take to safely free up space:

Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

Optimize storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

How to free up ‘System Data’ and other st… - Apple Community

It's good that you're taking a proactive approach to managing your storage. The absolute minimum is ~20-25 GB free space, and as a rule of thumb you should aim to have 15-20% of your total internal storage as free space. Terminology is important here – free space is not the same thing as available space. The one that matters is Free space, but what macOS shows in most places is Available space. Available space includes both free space and ‘purgeable’ space, the latter comprises system caches, snapshots and other data that macOS can delete if it decides more free space is needed. However, there is no way the user can force those data to be purged.

The place to check how much Free space you have is in Disk Utility (in Applications > Utilities), by selecting the main container disk below the drive itself (you may need to select View menu > Show all devices to see it). For example, on my M4 MacBook Pro, the Storage settings pane and Get Info on the internal drive show 1.24 TB of Available space, whereas Disk Utility shows there is 1.15 TB of actual Free space, 90 GB less than ‘available’. Although 90 GB is a small fraction of my 2 TB internal storage, that would not be the case with 256 GB or 512 GB of internal storage.

Note that you can also see the Free space in the System Report (System Settings > General > About > System Report button, at the bottom > Storage). 

jmancino wrote:

Surely that can't be the solution. Suddenly 10% of my drive's storage is full of an optional feature I want to not use. In previous iterations of the OS, that option could be toggled off. There still must be some way to clear up the storage space and turn off the feature. We must be missing something obvious, but I can't figure out what it is. There's no way Apple would fill 10% of my drive with an unwanted un-deletable feature.

You're not missing anything and Apple did not provide a way to delete the AI components built into MacOS 27.

If you want to let Apple know what your thoughts are on this, you can provided feedback here --> Feedback - macOS - Apple

EJW Tas wrote:

the fundamental issue is that 80/500 GB is loaded with software claiming 'intelligence' that I will never use.

that's a big chunk of a brand new Mini M4 SSD that's unavailable to me - without my consent or with any options to remove/reduce...

I don't know if that 80 GB is related to Apple Intelligence. Apple has gotten really insane with storage in the past few years. They've gone insane with Apple Intelligence too, but there's no guarantee that any particular "AssetsV2" folder is related to Apple Intelligence. There are probably multiple "AssetsV2" folders.

That doesn't mean these folders aren't a problem. It's just that it's important to identify data before deleting it.

For example, there is a folder at /System/Library/AssetsV2 that appears to contain some Apple Intelligence data. But it might also include some other useful content. In my case it has 65 GB of iOS simulator runtimes, which I would want to keep.

Plus, this folder is very highly protected. You would have to use Recovery Mode or turn off SIP to delete it, or even find out how big it is. I'll poke around in there and see what I can find.

Apparently, UAF means "Unified Asset Framework". That's not necessarily a bad thing.

But "FM" definitely means "Foundation Models", which is AI.

FYI, when I turned off the Apple Intelligence Report option, I was advised: "Turn off Apple Intelligence Report? Apple Intelligence activity will no longer be stored on this Mac. The report from the past 15 minutes will also be deleted from this Mac. Usage analytics may still be collected by Apple to help improve Apple Intelligence features and models."

Thanks for the tip. I've added that to my User Tip. However, I'm recommending that people keep that enabled for now. It may provide some confirmation that Apple Intelligence is truly turned off.

However, it looks like it is focused more on tracking usage for billing purposes. Or did people not realize that Apple Intelligence is a paid subscription service? I briefly considered some script to just run through AI features and burn up my free tier allotment with junk, but I think I would have to run that every day.

EJW Tas wrote:

How to remove AI from golden gate?

I just wrote a User Tip describing the process: Turn off Apple Intelligence in macOS 27 - Apple Community

I don't know how well it works in practice.

I'm hoping it's possible to remove AI from Golden Gate. Based on folder sizes, it looks like the System+ AI uses c.80GB of my SSD [Mini M4, 500GB SSD/24GB RAM] - that's around 15% of my drive. Folder "AssetsV2" is 40GB alone.

That's a different issue. If you're having trouble with storage, you'll need to use a 3rd party storage management tool, preferably one that gives you a nice, easy-to-understand pie chart of your storage use.

Unfortunately, storage on modern system is extraordinarily complicated. That folder might not actually be 40 GB in size. Could be more, could be less. There's no single trick to reduce storage use. Years ago, one could delete Time Machine local snapshots. But these days, it's always something different.

Full disclosure: I develop a storage management app that provides a nice, easy-to-understand pie chart of your storage use. Since I wrote the app, I can't post a link to it here in the forums.

etresoft wrote:

That's a different issue. If you're having trouble with storage, you'll need to use a 3rd party storage management tool, preferably one that gives you a nice, easy-to-understand pie chart of your storage use.

There is the option of moving Photos, Music, and TV libraries to an external drive - especially on a Mac desktop where the external drive can remain connected at all times.

Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support

Change where photos and videos are stored on Mac - Apple Support

Surely that can't be the solution. Suddenly 10% of my drive's storage is full of an optional feature I want to not use. In previous iterations of the OS, that option could be toggled off. There still must be some way to clear up the storage space and turn off the feature. We must be missing something obvious, but I can't figure out what it is. There's no way Apple would fill 10% of my drive with an unwanted un-deletable feature.

EJW Tas wrote: thanks - as in revert to Tahoe?

I think that may be the best option. If it took up a reasonable amount of disk space, then so be it, but these files are too large to ignore. Even if I was to use Apple Intelligence, the space it takes up is not negligible and I wouldn't be happy with that state of affairs. Apple needs to cut the size down. Given how poorly the feature was received when it came out, I am kind of surprised that Apple's pushing this hard.

Restore from your previous backup.

Yep.

jmancino wrote:

We must be missing something obvious, but I can't figure out what it is.

You're not missing anything.