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How to turn off Apple Intelligence
- singularity2001 2y agoYou don't need to turn it off, there is no real Apple Intelligence in the first place.
- ForOldHack 2y agoWow! So you have seen it!
- clumsysmurf 2y agoOn my iPad (iPadOS 18.3) there is no "Apple Intelligence" under Settings, only Siri. Maybe since I never enabled Siri (afaik)?
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoPerhaps your iPad isn't capable of running Apple Intelligence. From https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/ipad/ipade5045bb1/ipados https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/ipad/ipade5045bb1/ipad... "Apple Intelligence is available in iPadOS 18.1 or later on iPad models with M1 or later and iPad mini (A17 Pro)."
- jyunderwood 2y agoThat probably means your iPad doesn’t support it. You need an iPad with an M series chip or the A17 Pro mini.
- Etheryte 2y agoYour hardware needs to be fairly recent as well, for an iPad you need A17 Pro or M1 or newer. See [0] for the rest of the requirements. [0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/121115 https://support.apple.com/en-us/121115
- 4ad 2y agoApart from the HW requirements the others mentioned, Apple Intelligence is only available in the US (or at least it's not available in the EU). So make sure you're in the US.
- freehorse 2y agoI had to change my system's language to "English (US)" for the privilege of running it. There are a lot of reasons that it may not run at you, starting from from hardware or OS support, to being in the eu where eg iphone and ipad do not get it in eu right now but macs do for some reason. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/121115 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/121115
- jsheard 2y agoIt's not mentioned here but disabling Apple Intelligence also frees up ~7GB of storage, which might be appreciated on base 128GB devices. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/take-back-your-iphone-storage-by-turning-off-apple-intelligence/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/take-back-yo...
- randcraw 2y agoI disabled AI entirely on my ipad running 18.2.1 but it still indicates almost 3 GB storage in use for AI. The author suggests iOS will let you overwrite that space if needed, but I'm not so sure.
- _yb2s 2y agoBase model new iphones like the $200 prepaid burner SE I’m typing this on still have only 64gb of storage.
- scarface_74 2y agoWhich can’t run Apple intelligence anyway…
- _yb2s 2y agoThank goodness!
- lionkor 2y agoburner iphone is wild
- _yb2s 2y agoI recommend it- with a month prepaid it unlocks and you can then use it on any carrier, and still costs less than half what it costs new from Apple. For example, a new SE3 is $189 right now from Tracfone. Much cheaper than even the cheapest Android burner if you factor in the relative software update lifespan- most burners are locked to not get updates at all, but Apple doesn't allow carriers to do that. The SE has the same fast cpu, and long update lifespan of a high end iPhone.
- bajsejohannes 2y agoThe UX on MacOS is so bad here. First, a notification prompts you to enable Apple Intelligence. When you dismiss the notification by clicking the "x" in the corner, it instead opens the system settings and proceeds to download something (?) before showing you a checkbox where you can enable/disable it. It feels quite forced.
- wpm 2y agoDesperate product owners resort to desperate measures to juice metrics.
- RicoElectrico 2y agoBefore 2010s software didn't feel like it was different features competing for attention. Is product owner a new invention or what else happened?
- ryandrake 2y agoIt's not just "product owners." When you're one of 100 teams in BigCorp, your team might own Feature X, and another team owns Feature Y. If teams with more "successful" features grow faster, get more funding, get more compute time, get bigger, fatter org charts, then your whole team is incentivized to fight to make Feature X more prominent and elbow out Feature Y. As an end user, when you start your device or application or web page, know that the features that are exposed in the first screen, and "above the fold" as they say, that premium placement was likely fought bitterly over, through epic corporate political battles and backstabbing. They're not there because research showed that users want them conveniently located.
- amiga386 2y agoRaymond Chen, 2006: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061101-03/?p=29153 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061101-03/?p=29... > I often find myself saying, “I bet somebody got a really nice bonus for that feature.” “That feature” is something aggressively user-hostile, like forcing a shortcut into the Quick Launch bar or the Favorites menu, like automatically turning on a taskbar toolbar, like adding an icon to the notification area that conveys no useful information but merely adds to the clutter, or (my favorite) like adding an extra item to the desktop context menu that takes several seconds to initialize and gives the user the ability to change some obscure feature of their video card. > The thing is, all of these bad features were probably justified by some manager somewhere because it’s the only way their feature would get noticed. They have to justify their salary by pushing all these stupid ideas in the user’s faces. “Hey, look at me! I’m so cool!” After all, when the boss asks, “So, what did you accomplish in the past six months,” a manager can’t say, “Um, a bunch of stuff you can’t see. It just works better.” They have to say, “Oh, check out this feature, and that icon, and this dialog box.” Even if it’s a stupid feature. This bullshit has been with us since there have been desktop computers with notification areas.
- amelius 2y agoHow do I replace it by third party intelligence?
- deet 2y agoIt certainly would be nice if Apple explicitly supported replacing Apple Intelligence with a third party option by exposing the same privileged APIs they use to others. What exactly would you like a third party system to do? Mac or iOS?
- firtoz 2y agoI'd argue that there's no way that Apple would want to offer access to something like that to any third party, and that it'd be better to start implementing it ourselves from scratch in any other operating system.
- MexicanYoda 2y ago[Disclaimer: author here] You can disable it and try an open source alternative https://github.com/sharingan-no-kakashi/orange-intelligence https://github.com/sharingan-no-kakashi/orange-intelligence if you want.
- whycome 2y agoI've intentionally been running it now just to see how wrong its summaries of messages are. So often, it relays the exact opposite of the intent and I want to understand why.
- threetonesun 2y agoSeems like with the last update (the italicized summary notifications) it's gotten every so slightly better. But yes until now my friends and I left it on just to enjoy how absurdly wrong the summaries were.
- can16358p 2y agoInteresting. My impressions are the exact opposite: it perfectly summarizes everything to the point like 98% of the time at least.
- CharlesW 2y ago> My impressions are the exact opposite: it perfectly summarizes everything to the point like 98% of the time at least. Yep, that's my experience as well. I take screenshots (and report them) when I see a wonky one, which has happened twice.
- sys_64738 2y agoIt has to be 100% accurate. No Trumpisms allowed.
- deergomoo 2y agoMaybe I'm just a billy no-mates, but even with perfect accuracy the kind and volume of notifications I get on my phone just wouldn't really benefit from summarisation. Maybe for a group chat I haven't checked in a while, but outside that it's not like I've got people sending me essay-length messages.
- whycome 2y agoWell, I'd say it's probably 'right' like 95% of the time where it conveys a good sense of the original intent/sentiment. But, that other 5% is what is "way too often" because in those instances it can be so far off that it could be classified as "not even wrong"....
- ynniv 2y ago"you may have concerns about privacy" Way to FUD: these models are local unless you enable ChatGPT integration.
- arccy 2y agoway to FUD, leaking data out of the apps I choose is still a privacy violation.
- timeon 2y ago> ... There are times, however, when Apple Intelligence needs to leverage a model that requires more computational power than your device can provide on its own. For these tasks, Apple Intelligence sends your request to Private Cloud Compute. Private Cloud Compute is a server-based intelligence system designed to handle more complex requests while protecting your privacy. For example, when you use Writing Tools to proofread or edit an email, your device may send the email to Private Cloud Compute for a server-based model to do the proofreading or editing. -- https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/intelligence-engine/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/intelligence-eng... There is also: "The data sent to and returned by Private Cloud Compute is not stored or made accessible to Apple" - but it can leave your computer and even way between the Private Cloud Compute and your device can be privacy concern.
- pen2l 2y agoIt's really hard to believe, but OpenAI kind of did Apple a bamboozle. I use advanced voice mode in ChatGPT, and I had a bit of a eureka moment. It is the first time ever that an AI chat /actually works/. I've tried Siri, Alexa etc extensively for years, but AV mode in ChatGPT is the first AI voice chat thing that /actually works/: I can comfortably interrupt it, I can misspeak, and I can rely on it to have continuity in the context of a conversation... and the responses I get actually answer my question, most of the times. It all just works... But for whatever reason, whatever OpenAI is giving to Apple in this Apple-OpenAI partnership, is more or less worthless. They're not giving them the keys. I wish AI voice chat would be relegated or commoditized to being just a feature (and I hope/think recent OSS advancements make that be the case), but until then I have 'Action button' set to start voice conversation with ChatGPT. Curious to see Apple's next move though, with the recent changes in this landscape.
- awestroke 2y agoYeah Kudos to Altman for pearl clutching and holding back the whole field
- ceejayoz 2y agoSeems risky… people whose first exposure is via iPhone seem unlikely to convert to direct users if it’s useless there.
- dingnuts 2y agothis is still how I am with pretty much all genAI. People on this site say it's great, but a lot of people on this site have big incentives to hold that view. I have found the free models to be useless, and sufficiently useless that the paid models -- which are not cheap -- are not enticing. Maybe I'd be more willing to pay per token if I could get a refund for all the tokens it outputs that are wrong? Maybe my opinion of genAI will change if my employer ever allows us to use it and I am able to use a state of the art model on someone else's dime, but I'm not risking $60 or whatever to find out the performance is only moderately better than GPT3
- mrcwinn 2y agoWhy would I want a crippled version of ChatGPT that is only updated once per year alongside new iPhones? Apple Intelligence feels useless and the iPhone has never felt so stagnant.
- therealmarv 2y agoThis is spyware, convince me otherwise. I don't want it, I don't need it, give me the space back taken by local AI. So I have a local AI analysing everything I do on my Mac, iPhone whatever and the only thing holding back any sort of "AI analysed profile" to authorities (on wrongdoings?) is a "trust me bro we won't do it" from Apple? This tastes like the CSAM on-device analysis debacle from 1-2 years ago. So from now on I have to de-spyware my Apple devices like Windows machines. And the irony: My current Pixel Android phone does not analyse all content on my device! First time in years I'm considering to switch back to Linux for my Laptop.
- dingnuts 2y agoI recently put Linux on an Asus G14 and I can't stop thinking about how it's the same size and similar finish and build quality as my 13" MacBook Pro from 2015 but has a GPU and is running Linux and all the hardware worked out of the box (except maybe the built-in mic which I haven't tested) hell I even bought it in store! eat your heart out Tim Apple, the year of the Linux desktop has arrived anyway my point in this comment is DO IT you won't regret it! modern Linux has gotten so good
- wruza 2y agoIt hasn’t, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42767368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42767368 I regret every time I go “modern Linux” and think that people who advise to use it for desktop are either blind to numerous obvious bugs and failures or don’t even use it beyond running a browser. all the hardware worked out of the box Does it sleep and wake up without issues? Can it go sleep twice in a row without reboot? This is the first pain point to check with linux desktop. Programmatic issues are relatively minor compared to this.
- II2II 2y agoIn my case: yes and yes. In my case: everything works out of the box with one laptop. The only thing that doesn't work out of the box with my other laptop is the fingerprint reader. Both laptops shipped with Windows. Neither laptop came with any claim of Linux compatibility. Contrast that to Windows, where sleep mode is unreliable on one. You cannot even do a clean install Windows without jumping through hoops on said laptop since generic media does not include WiFi, trackpad, or touchscreen drivers. Every operating system has issues and operating systems that don't work for some people may work for others. From this thread alone, I can guarantee you that there are at least two people in this world for whom Linux supported their hardware out of the box.
- ryandrake 2y agoIf you're a bored web developer looking for a project that should take a day or less, here's an idea: AI-Turnoff. Simple static web page. List out today's software products that companies are desperately cramming AI into, and provide quick directions on how to turn the AI off.
- alt227 2y agoThis would take a day or less, but would quickly become a nightmare to maintain as AI develops and options/settings change etc.
- walterbell 2y agoSadly, there is an endless arms race in opt in/out dark patterns, between vendors, EU regulators, and tutorial writers. Some features can be disabled via MDM config profile, which is an XML file that can be installed with a few clicks.
- latexr 2y agoYou don’t need to be a web developer to do that. A GitHub (or other service) with a simple README.md would suffice. In fact it would be better, because it would allow other people to easily contribute updates.
- bitwize 2y ago"Awesome AI Turnoff"
- ks2048 2y agoAlso, list alternatives that don't push AI on you.
- deltarholamda 2y agoMy partner got the "you must download iOS 18.3, it has security fixes!" message, and did so. It defaults to Apple Intelligence "on", which they had already declined in the last update. So, turned it off in settings. Then discovered they had to turn it off in each app that uses it individually. That is not good, Apple. Terrible UX. All the other changes were just as big of a hit. Mail went wonky (the Categories view is not great). The iMessage apps list is now gigantic and many of them you can't turn off, only reorder. Honestly, this Wall Street-influenced AI goldrush is getting out of hand. Apple used to be better than this. The last updates to iOS did not make the devices better, just different. I'm staying on iOS 17 as long as I can, my feeble iPhone 14 won't do Apple Intelligence anyway, but I also don't want 18 and its changes. Honestly, I'm about ready to just move to a flip phone. The only feature I really need is a WiFi hotspot.
- sureIy 2y ago[flagged]
- hobs 2y agoAs you are acting as a mouthpiece for Apple, let's pretend you are Apple. You just turned on a thing I find annoying that I have to individually turn off everywhere, which one of us is doing a knee jerk thing again? You, remove the knee. You need to sell me on the value prop of a thing, not force it upon me.
- sureIy 2y ago> you are acting as a mouthpiece for Apple No bro, read my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42899513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42899513 > You just turned on a thing You appear not to read. It's not one thing. My point is that people are lumping things together also because of Apple.
- hobs 2y agoI read your point, you ignored mine - I understand the companies position, and they are wrong, my customer perception matters because you literally changed my experience. I genuinely don't care about the other perspective when I am explaining the one you are ignoring.
- sureIy 2y agoI hate that Apple, which in 2023 avoided even mentioning AI, just ran with the whole thing in 2024. The iPhone 16 is just an "AI phone" now. Apple, you did not need this rebranding. They should have just introduced the usual "machine learning" features and avoided this rainbowy nonsense. "Features," not "AI features." Hopefully they'll undo the damage in 2026 and rip this unnecessary bandaid off. The reality is that they did a whole lot of nothing in 2023 and scrambled to push something out. Crazy that iOS 18's marquee features weren't even out until December.
- qrush 2y agoI just recently learned that Apple Intelligence takes up 5GB+ on my Macbook - I wish it was easy to delete. I truly wish Apple would stop focusing on these AI features and get back to basics.
- esskay 2y ago7.1gb as of today. It'll keep growing as well.
- latexr 2y agoYou’d think that with all the articles online repeatedly teaching people to disable this crap, the companies would have taken a hint. Save face (and money) by not shoving this down everyone’s throats. Just make a prompt, your OS is full of them already and you do it for other features. When installing the new version, show a notification or whatever with: Apple Intelligence is here! [Try It Now] [Maybe Later] Yes, yes, I know many of us would rather have a [Fuck You, Get This Shit out of My Face and Never Ask Me Again] button, but I’m trying to be realistic here about something they could plausibly implement.
- deergomoo 2y agoThe inability to say no is the pattern I loathe the most in modern software. Fuck you, this is still my computer, stop removing my agency.
- vaylian 2y agoI don't think this is a "modern" phenomenon. Proprietary software has been doing this for ages. And the web is also full of user-hostile tracking with questionable cookie-dialogs. If it's an option for you, consider Linux or one of the BSDs and the associated software ecosystems.
- sensanaty 2y agoThe problem is the oblivious users who aren't tech savvy. Enable a feature like this by default for every user, and you've got a big chunk of people "using" it, which leads to some product manager or sales person or whatever somewhere deep in the pits of the hell that is the corporate ladder getting a nice bonus and possibly a raise. It's precisely why we need more stringent regulation that kills any kind of bullshit like this. Leave my fucking device alone you vultures.
- Spivak 2y agoI see this take all the time and it's absurd. You would have every new feature in a piece of software disabled by default? There's no conspiracy to game metrics with this, anything you would seriously consider shipping default-off you would just not ship.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- IAmNotACellist 2y agoI'm genuinely surprised the answer isn't a smug "Why would you want to do that?" a la any time I tried to get help when I had a Mac.
- timbaboon 2y agoMine won’t activate because I have Siri and my iPhone set to different versions of English… according to Apple. Both are set to English (South Africa), but it still thinks they are different and so won’t activate. I am not complaining!
- silverwind 2y agoThis seems to be the best way to prevent it from even installing on MacOS, e.g. works with SIP as well.
- cedws 2y agoI know practically nothing about this thing. I have no idea if it's enabled, disabled, or what it even does. Have Apple just intentionally been quiet about it because they think it's going to flop, or have their marketing department given up? If it's that groundbreaking I would expect them to be shouting from the rooftops about it.
- smitelli 2y agoI remember the last release cycle, all the marketing taglines were “the new iPhone with titanium” and I remember thinking “this means nothing to me.” Now it’s “the new iPhone with Apple Intelligence” and I’m thinking “this still means nothing to me.”
- tippytippytango 2y agoI have a feeling that "Apple is late, but does it right" is an excuse. They are dealing with a tradeoff from being a deeply integrated and polished system. Being in control of everything is nice for creating a unified experience. But, it also means there's coupling everywhere. It must be a nightmare to change or add things, especially big things to iOS. We are getting to see what happens when they are forced to rush, they need to move a lot slower to avoid breaking things.
- TheRealPomax 2y agoIt's also purely surface polish. It's a rat's nest underneath the shiny, I half expect Apple to not even know how to make things work properly anymore given the hot mess their underlying systems are.
- Doomed2Repeat 2y agoArticle has an error, Apple themselves tells you the automated transcription for voice memos unable to be disabled regardless of settings for Apple Unintelligence. I was hoping this article signaled some change in this policy. So I verified that every last setting is set to disable and recorded a 30 second voice memo. On conclusion the recording displays with the parentheses comment bubble, so I click view transription and immediately there is the perfect transcription of my recording. Now I just removed half of my follow-up on this :) because I decided to make this simply a correction to the article. But I did recently purchase a $5 audio recorder app that claims no info collected -- most collect something.
- baby-yoda 2y agoAfter disabling Apple Intelligence I'm no longer able to use CarPlay with a message saying Siri needs to be enabled. It doesn't appear Siri is available independent of Apple Intelligence, is that correct? Any way to enable Apple Intelligence exclusively for CarPlay?
- esskay 2y agoSiri is Apple Intelligence now so that makes sense. Old Siri is being phased out.
- ForOldHack 2y agoThe first, and last time I tried "Apple" "Intelligence" at Bestbuy, I asked which computer was best for running "Apple" "Intelligence" and it recommended an over and under washer dryer. Its wrap.
- mococa 2y agoWhat I keep asking myself every day is: how would AI be useful for ordinary people? Maybe I’m biased because I only use it for coding.