Developer's config-profile trick strips Apple Intelligence from macOS 27, reversibly

When Apple shipped macOS 27 'Golden Gate', it dropped the toggle that let users turn Apple Intelligence off. The AI models take up about 12GB — over 30GB by some counts — even for people who never use Siri's new tricks, Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground or the ChatGPT extension. In response, a developer publishing as Om Lahore created RemoveMacAI, an open-source command-line tool that turns Apple Intelligence off in a way the developer describes as fully reversible.

The clever part is what it doesn't touch. RemoveMacAI 'turns off Siri, Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground, the ChatGPT extension, and all the summaries, then it deletes the models and stops macOS from downloading them again', the developer wrote on Reddit. It works by 'using a configuration profile you approve in System Settings plus Apple's own asset service, so System Integrity Protection stays on and nothing in /System gets touched directly'.

Removing the profile restores the defaults, and macOS re-downloads the models when a feature is switched back on. Dictation, a separate setting, keeps working, and users can strip only the features they dislike.

Ars Technica covered the tool about a week after the macOS 27 release; users on Reddit reported it works, and it had 1,700 GitHub stars within days. Commenters read it as a marker of where things have gone: 'we've gotten to the point on macOS too, where you need to run third-party scripts on a new OS installation to gain back control of your system resources and remove unwanted crapware'.

Deleting the models by hand would mean fighting System Integrity Protection and redoing it on every update; the profile route makes the OS do the work.

Because the switch runs through a user-approved profile, the change is auditable, reversible and never modifies system files.

Selective per-feature removal turned one blunt switch into a menu, which is what most users actually want.

Apple's own asset service keys model re-downloads to feature state, so blocking re-download comes free with the same mechanism.

When a vendor closes the front door, its own management channels are often still open: the cleanest hack is the one the platform itself honors and can undo.

Within a week of release the tool had 1,700 GitHub stars, coverage from Ars Technica (spotted via MacRumors and The Verge), and user reports confirming it works. The source records no comment from Apple.