Anyone who’s upgraded to macOS 27 know if the “mismatched Siri/systems language” trick will keep it from downloading the local AI models? I’ve heard mixed reports and want to find out before upgrading.
⚠️ This is not an invite to discuss AI in my mentions! I’ve been chronically low on disk space and don’t want to budget the 17-30GB extra space they’ll take up. ⚠️
@misty what a time to be alive
(Also this is likely a problem I'm going to hit too)
Sep 17, 2026, 2:47 AM@misty Hoping it’ll work, I went with a large-ish drive for my laptop when I got it but it’s amazing how drive space seems to magically disappear.
@Serenus Yup… 1TB felt so huge once! Hard to believe I got away with 80GB on my PowerBook G4 once upon a time.
@misty I’m not 100%, but I think they’re included with the update. The OS install was 27GB for me, which seems excessive.
@OneSadCookie My understanding is they’re not in the base install, but are downloaded on first run after the OS is installed.
@misty I have mismatched languages since before the install, so if you know where they’d be downloaded to I can verify if I have them?
@OneSadCookie They’re located in /System/Library/AssetsV2; the com_apple_MobileAsset_UAF_FM_GenerativeModels subfolder in particular has the big one. I’m not sure if you’ll have permissions to get the size of the folder though.
@misty Yeah, I have that folder but I can't see the contents or see how big it is, even with sudo :/
Finder reports that AssetsV2 is 29GB, but I think that's probably the size *excluding* the folders I don't have permissions for. The iOS Simulator Runtime is 16GB, for example.
@misty @mcc I do not believe so, based on some brief testing. It is hard to exhaustively test this but I have heard rumors that if you set the screen time restrictions to remove writing tools, being low on disk space *itself* may prevent or remove the models. I have not found documentation of this though.
Sep 17, 2026, 6:59 AM@misty I thought you meant all the replies discussing AI would take 17-30GB at first and I was like haha yeahh
@misty somehow on macOS 27 (fresh install) my M1 has not downloaded the local AI models. Perhaps its because I'm in NZ region and it's unsupported here?
@tinfoilhat That could well be! Too bad I probably can’t make them think I’m in an unsupported region, haha