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Comment by thedanbob | Hacker News Reader

I followed this guide[0] (with hints from this issue[1]) to recover 16+ GB. It's ridiculous that one has to go to such lengths, but I was not willing to give up 16% of my free space for models I will never use.

[0] https://github.com/tejyash/delete-apple-intelligence-macos [1] https://github.com/tejyash/delete-apple-intelligence-macos/i...

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One thing I haven't seen tried in any of these things floating around (I'm still on macOS 15) that is the first thing I'd test after deletion is to stick a locked dummy file in there of the same name and see if that interferes with redownloads without any of the other mess. That's a classic simple hack. Ie, after deletion just a quick

  # touch com_apple_MobileAsset_UAF_FM_GenerativeModels
  # chflags schg com_apple_MobileAsset_UAF_FM_GenerativeModels

Then reenable SIP (or not). While maybe Apple stuck in some extra smarts in their download logic, and a full system update I think nowadays just blows everything away and replaces it, I've found in practice developers (not unreasonably) tend not to consider non-trivially-removable files appearing "where they're not supposed to be" and build a path for that. Granted, possible the process just ends up spinning trying to redownload over and over again or something but would be an easy thing to test.

Yeah, this is bad for all kinds of reasons:

- opt-in without user consent

- on already traditionally overpriced Apple hardware

- storage being overpriced to insane levels on top due to the AI bubble

- apple hardware being impossible to upgrade by the user to higher amount of storage due to chips soldered on or artificial limitations on what storage can be installed

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