You should make use of Cunningham's Law[1]. Instead of posting an "Ask HN" asking if it's impossible to disable, post a "Show HN" claiming that it is impossible to disable.
Then people will flock to tell you how it can be disabled by XYZ.
Just as a note, from what I see the problem is not only the privacy implications but also that the local AI comes with a baggage amounting to 10% of the space on the base mac models. Which is already severely limited.
I have not found the local/remote hand off to be very reliable either, so tasks that used to be almost instantaneous for Siri are now spinning to the point where I assume they failed. A simple 2 minute timer took almost 30 seconds to set the other day.
Thanks, that's an interesting observation! When I double-clicked on the "Siri" process in Activity Monitor, I saw that it's an app called "Siri AI".
If the "Siri AI" app has replaced Spotlight, then I wonder if Apple keeps building "personal context" despite Siri and Apple Intelligence being disabled.
It for sure doesn't sound well to disable Siri and still see a "Siri" process.
This sounds similar to Microsoft and the start menu. A few years ago I went to extreme lengths to disable cortana (powershell guid uninstall). This invisibly and inexplicably disabled updates to the start menu search feature. The index remained the feature worked, it just never got updated again. No amount of manually reindexing the disk helped. Reinstalling cortana got it working.
I've been daily-driving a mac for 10 years now and I've only ever triggered Siri by accident. I do use it pretty regularly on the phone, mostly to set timers, get directions, and call contacts, but I've been well trained over these years to not expect it to be capable of more than that.
I remember it being pretty useful on phone. Now, it can't even "like" a song when I'm driving and I want it to add a song to my Spotify favourites list. It could do a few months ago, now it refuses with "sorry there was a problem with the app".
I've had to resort to asking it to take a screenshot so I can go find the song later. Three quarters of the time it never saves the screenshot though, despite seeing the screen flash out of the corner of my eye.
I've been using an iPhone 12 Mini since however long it's been out, never used Siri intentionally either, would prefer to disable it fully, but CarPlay for some reason cannot be used without Siri, even though I never use Siri. I consider it 1st party malware at this point.
It’s because they’d prefer you interacted with CarPlay with voice rather than looking away from the road.
An admirable objective, but given how “well” siri has worked in the past, an unrealistic one. We’ll see if 27 is a significant improvement. If I had to bet, I’d bet no, at least for the next year.
There’s the old trick of setting your computer language to be different from the Siri language. I get the following error message when I open Siri in Settings:
> Apple Intelligence requires that Mac and Siri are set to the same language. Currently your Mac is set to English (United States) and Siri is set to English (Canada).
I think at one point they may have removed this limitation but then they reintroduced it in macOS 27.0.
Yes, I did something similar: prior to disabling Siri, I set Siri's language to French and kept the system language set to English (UK), but the Siri AI.app ("Siri" process in Activity Monitor) just keeps running despite Siri being indicated as disabled in Settings.
If you are on macOS 27, could you please open Activity Monitor, search (filter) for "siri" and see if a process called "Siri" is still running?
You are right. The UI shows Siri disabled and offers to turn it on, but the process is still running. That process seems to change its name based on whether the UI thinks Siri is enabled; it can be called either just "Siri" or "Siri AI" but it’s the same executable.
In Screen Time -> Content and Privacy, there's a setting to switch Siri to 'Siri Classic' which strips out the Apple Intelligence-backed behavior specifically.
It's a joke. Microsoft has been ignoring user preferences and doing what is good for Microsoft for many years now, and the parent poster was implying that Apple is now doing the same kind of bad behavior.
One workaround that I know would work would be an enterprise profile. I know this because I’m one of the people tasked with blocking AI stuff at my org. How you’d implement this without a subscription to management (MDM) software I leave to you to research. I know it’s possible without proprietary tools because I’ve read about people using profiles to block software updates on their personal computers, but I don’t recall how that’s done.
One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the AI bots will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords. I'd like to remind them that I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground data centers.
Try disabling any of the launchd tasks related to it, odds are theres a service that starts at boot/login regardless of any user-facing setting that do nothing if they're all turned off (just like iCloud related daemons).
Odds are you'll probably run into something that requires you to disable SIP, like I did when I got tired of mediaanalysisd eating up CPU cycles on a 2018 Mac mini.
Thanks, I believe this is what the debloat script mentioned in my post does. I manually executed the `launchctl bootout` and `launchctl disable` commands on all Siri and AI-related services in the https://github.com/OleksandrKrupko/mac-os-debloat/blob/main/... script, but the "Siri" process ("Siri AI.app") still keeps running even after restarting.
The Siri AI.app is read-only, so I could not even remove it. But perhaps it would be possible to boot into Recovery, mount the system partition as rw and delete the Siri AI.app from the filesystem?
P.S. I did also disable mediaanalysisd and photoanalysisd, and those are NOT running. However, the Siri AI.app does keep running...
I really can't believe how bad it's gotten. I know people on here have been complaining about the direction of macOS for years but in the last few years it increasingly feels like I'm being punished for using my computer.
A bicycle for your mind with squeaking brakes and a skipping chain.
I jumped to mac with Tiger when they started using x86.
Around 2006 I believe.
It was always to become more comfortable with POSIX, but I liked it and have stayed. My current laptop is a 2019 MBP and as they are now phasing out Intel support I'm now buying a thinkpad and finally moving on to Linux. Macos has just become too annoying, and macs too expensive.
Not sure. People are saying "Siri" but complaining about space utilization which I assume is for the foundational models. Those are used pervasively, and are exposed as a resource for third party app usage as well.
Apple's goal was to have a set of foundational models to discourage proliferation of small bundled models in first and third party software. So ironically, they exist to try to save people disk space.
My guess is that iOS, iPadOS and macOS are converging on some points, and Siri gets included.
It would be interesting on macOS if it had amazing computer use and was able to control all aspects of all apps, and you’d be able to instantly do anything with voice only.
Siri Actions are one tiny step closer to that, but we’re pretty far away from this.
Silly argument. It’s more like buying a BWM and being happy with everything expect a stupid decision like placement of the handbrake. Of course you can complain about it.
I think the counter-argument would be that one obviously should have gotten a Kia K4. Otherwise equivalent for everyone's needs excluding hand brake location.
Plenty of other operating systems out there? Yeah. Better? Depends. Hardware as a package? Absolutely not and it’s by such a wide margin there’s no competition whatsoever.
I don’t particularly care for MacOS but Apple’s hardware is generally best in class, particularly for battery life, touchpad, and other laptop specifics.
I'm still running Leopard. The built in X11 server, combined with X11 forwarding, and a Linux box works fine for my meager needs. I can run Chromium using X11 forwarding, seems to work fine for the most part.
Same here. Unfortunately, if you use Xcode to develop for iOS, then Apple basically forces you to install macOS 27 to be able to develop for the new iPhones. The iPhone 18 Pro requires Xcode 27, and Xcode 27 won't run on Sequoia.
If anyone knows how to make the iPhone 18 Pro work with Xcode 26 on Sequoia, and in turn with iOS 27, I (and I'm sure many other people) would be very happy to hear how!
But it is possible to run even the latest Xcode 26.6 by directly executing Xcode.app/Contents/MacOS/Xcode, and Xcode will run. This trick doesn't work with Xcode 27 anymore though. If you try that, you'll see a warning message that says something like "Xcode requires macOS 26 to run".
I started de-googling a long time ago, part of it was an iPhone (12 mini), 5 years later I really felt like de-Appling as well. The Appstore is a cesspool, privacy concerns are about the same as Google now (or perhaps always were?).
I went with GrapheneOS. Very good experience, but not without Google Play (store and services). It's all sandboxed, so presumably I'm only leaking consciously chosen data. It's really aimed at security, not so much de-googling. Something like Murena's /e/OS is much more aimed at de-Googling, but as GrapheneOS devs will usually be quick to point out here, they are "quite poor" with their security.
A de-Googled functional appstore on a FairPhone (+ with all the GrapheneOS required security bells and wistles) would be ideal for me. But it's still either optimal security focussed OR de-Googling/de-big-teching focused. Yes there is f-droid, but there are too many apps that require the Google services (like banking).
Atm 1 app does not work, one of my banking apps required the highest tier of Google control. I will happily install on devices that have been years without security updates though :s
Overall the GrapheneOS experience (base launcher etc) is very clean, fast, minimal, ad free.
You should make use of Cunningham's Law[1]. Instead of posting an "Ask HN" asking if it's impossible to disable, post a "Show HN" claiming that it is impossible to disable.
Then people will flock to tell you how it can be disabled by XYZ.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
This is a reddit thread where OP claims to have gotten instructions from Apple Support to remove Apple Intelligence.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/1wlm6gd/apple_support_...
I like how Apple designed an optional feature that requires you to disable SIP to reclaim storage space.
If you don't manually delete the files, they remain on your Mac until your storage is nearly full.
Just as a note, from what I see the problem is not only the privacy implications but also that the local AI comes with a baggage amounting to 10% of the space on the base mac models. Which is already severely limited.
I have not found the local/remote hand off to be very reliable either, so tasks that used to be almost instantaneous for Siri are now spinning to the point where I assume they failed. A simple 2 minute timer took almost 30 seconds to set the other day.
You're brave. I'm still on Sequoia.
Same here. The new macOS'es always seem to add more restrictions, more bloat, etc nowadays. I was thinking of upgrading the other day; glad I didn't.
considering security i think you are the one who is brave but i am biassed so dont worry more than u already do xD
The absolute arrogance of taking up this much disk space for an application that most serious users will simply never engage with. Garbage.
The process that shows the Spotlight UI is now the one called "Siri", previously it was called "Spotlight".
Thanks, that's an interesting observation! When I double-clicked on the "Siri" process in Activity Monitor, I saw that it's an app called "Siri AI".
If the "Siri AI" app has replaced Spotlight, then I wonder if Apple keeps building "personal context" despite Siri and Apple Intelligence being disabled.
It for sure doesn't sound well to disable Siri and still see a "Siri" process.
This sounds similar to Microsoft and the start menu. A few years ago I went to extreme lengths to disable cortana (powershell guid uninstall). This invisibly and inexplicably disabled updates to the start menu search feature. The index remained the feature worked, it just never got updated again. No amount of manually reindexing the disk helped. Reinstalling cortana got it working.
That makes sense. Sending SIGKILL to that process causes the spotlight UI in the menu bar to flash.
I've been daily-driving a mac for 10 years now and I've only ever triggered Siri by accident. I do use it pretty regularly on the phone, mostly to set timers, get directions, and call contacts, but I've been well trained over these years to not expect it to be capable of more than that.
Trivia: the most popular method of using Siri, per the analytics, is "accidental activation".
I remember it being pretty useful on phone. Now, it can't even "like" a song when I'm driving and I want it to add a song to my Spotify favourites list. It could do a few months ago, now it refuses with "sorry there was a problem with the app".
I've had to resort to asking it to take a screenshot so I can go find the song later. Three quarters of the time it never saves the screenshot though, despite seeing the screen flash out of the corner of my eye.
I've been using an iPhone 12 Mini since however long it's been out, never used Siri intentionally either, would prefer to disable it fully, but CarPlay for some reason cannot be used without Siri, even though I never use Siri. I consider it 1st party malware at this point.
It’s because they’d prefer you interacted with CarPlay with voice rather than looking away from the road.
An admirable objective, but given how “well” siri has worked in the past, an unrealistic one. We’ll see if 27 is a significant improvement. If I had to bet, I’d bet no, at least for the next year.
Your training is now out of date.
There’s the old trick of setting your computer language to be different from the Siri language. I get the following error message when I open Siri in Settings:
> Apple Intelligence requires that Mac and Siri are set to the same language. Currently your Mac is set to English (United States) and Siri is set to English (Canada).
I think at one point they may have removed this limitation but then they reintroduced it in macOS 27.0.
Yes, I did something similar: prior to disabling Siri, I set Siri's language to French and kept the system language set to English (UK), but the Siri AI.app ("Siri" process in Activity Monitor) just keeps running despite Siri being indicated as disabled in Settings.
If you are on macOS 27, could you please open Activity Monitor, search (filter) for "siri" and see if a process called "Siri" is still running?
You are right. The UI shows Siri disabled and offers to turn it on, but the process is still running. That process seems to change its name based on whether the UI thinks Siri is enabled; it can be called either just "Siri" or "Siri AI" but it’s the same executable.
In Screen Time -> Content and Privacy, there's a setting to switch Siri to 'Siri Classic' which strips out the Apple Intelligence-backed behavior specifically.
Instead of "Siri Classic", I selected the "Don’t Allow Siri" option, but it didn't help. The "Siri" (Siri AI.app) process keeps running regardless.
Sounds like Apple hired some of the Microsoft project managers.
In my experience, every company with more than 1000 employees absolutely has garbage project managers!
Why would you say that? Can't it be a genuine Apple product?
It's a joke. Microsoft has been ignoring user preferences and doing what is good for Microsoft for many years now, and the parent poster was implying that Apple is now doing the same kind of bad behavior.
I disagree with what you say, so remind me later.
One workaround that I know would work would be an enterprise profile. I know this because I’m one of the people tasked with blocking AI stuff at my org. How you’d implement this without a subscription to management (MDM) software I leave to you to research. I know it’s possible without proprietary tools because I’ve read about people using profiles to block software updates on their personal computers, but I don’t recall how that’s done.
You can just use Apple Configurator to make a .mobileconfig file and apply that, no MDM required.
Maybe "macOS 27: Workaround to avoid downloading AI models and save storage":
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49787535
I've love to disable Apple Intelligence just to get the space back. It's murdering my Mac Mini.
> I could still see a "Siri" process running in Activity Monitor. Upon further inspection, I found that it is the "Siri AI.app".
Is it doing anything (what are its CPU and memory usage like)?
You can move over to Microsoft and use Copilot or if that isn’t enough, you can buy a new Googlebook laptop.
Goobledygook laptops would be as much of an abomination as those Windows S laptops
They might as well merge and become Chromicrapple.
Resistance is futile.
you will be assimilated
One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the AI bots will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords. I'd like to remind them that I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground data centers.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49787535
Try disabling any of the launchd tasks related to it, odds are theres a service that starts at boot/login regardless of any user-facing setting that do nothing if they're all turned off (just like iCloud related daemons).
Odds are you'll probably run into something that requires you to disable SIP, like I did when I got tired of mediaanalysisd eating up CPU cycles on a 2018 Mac mini.
Thanks, I believe this is what the debloat script mentioned in my post does. I manually executed the `launchctl bootout` and `launchctl disable` commands on all Siri and AI-related services in the https://github.com/OleksandrKrupko/mac-os-debloat/blob/main/... script, but the "Siri" process ("Siri AI.app") still keeps running even after restarting.
The Siri AI.app is read-only, so I could not even remove it. But perhaps it would be possible to boot into Recovery, mount the system partition as rw and delete the Siri AI.app from the filesystem?
P.S. I did also disable mediaanalysisd and photoanalysisd, and those are NOT running. However, the Siri AI.app does keep running...
I didn't check it yet but I hope being in EU macOS 27 upgrade is basically small UI tweaks and thats it :D
Still holding off for now
Couldn’t it be due to spotlight being entirely replaced by this new Siri AI? Not sure how things work under the hood now.
The final release of 27 still has so many bugs.
It's depressing to see certain bugs persist in each new beta. You know they'll be in release.
I gave up reporting anything years ago.
I really can't believe how bad it's gotten. I know people on here have been complaining about the direction of macOS for years but in the last few years it increasingly feels like I'm being punished for using my computer.
A bicycle for your mind with squeaking brakes and a skipping chain.
It's not a bicycle for your mind, it's a railbike draisine that only goes on the rails that Apple allows you to use.
I jumped to mac with Tiger when they started using x86. Around 2006 I believe. It was always to become more comfortable with POSIX, but I liked it and have stayed. My current laptop is a 2019 MBP and as they are now phasing out Intel support I'm now buying a thinkpad and finally moving on to Linux. Macos has just become too annoying, and macs too expensive.
I still have to find anybody using Siri on his Mac
Please tell me what the use case is. Somebody somewhere must find it useful otherwise it would not be so prominent.
This a genuine question btw not trying to be sarcastic or dismissive
Not sure. People are saying "Siri" but complaining about space utilization which I assume is for the foundational models. Those are used pervasively, and are exposed as a resource for third party app usage as well.
Apple's goal was to have a set of foundational models to discourage proliferation of small bundled models in first and third party software. So ironically, they exist to try to save people disk space.
My guess is that iOS, iPadOS and macOS are converging on some points, and Siri gets included.
It would be interesting on macOS if it had amazing computer use and was able to control all aspects of all apps, and you’d be able to instantly do anything with voice only.
Siri Actions are one tiny step closer to that, but we’re pretty far away from this.
if you dont want a car with the hood welded shut.....Dont buy a car with the hood welded shut.
plenty of better operating systems out their
Silly argument. It’s more like buying a BWM and being happy with everything expect a stupid decision like placement of the handbrake. Of course you can complain about it.
I think the counter-argument would be that one obviously should have gotten a Kia K4. Otherwise equivalent for everyone's needs excluding hand brake location.
Plenty of other operating systems out there? Yeah. Better? Depends. Hardware as a package? Absolutely not and it’s by such a wide margin there’s no competition whatsoever.
I don’t particularly care for MacOS but Apple’s hardware is generally best in class, particularly for battery life, touchpad, and other laptop specifics.
Sequoia will be taken from my cold dead hands.
> Sequoia will be taken from my cold dead hands.
I'm still running Leopard. The built in X11 server, combined with X11 forwarding, and a Linux box works fine for my meager needs. I can run Chromium using X11 forwarding, seems to work fine for the most part.
Same here. Unfortunately, if you use Xcode to develop for iOS, then Apple basically forces you to install macOS 27 to be able to develop for the new iPhones. The iPhone 18 Pro requires Xcode 27, and Xcode 27 won't run on Sequoia.
If anyone knows how to make the iPhone 18 Pro work with Xcode 26 on Sequoia, and in turn with iOS 27, I (and I'm sure many other people) would be very happy to hear how!
This is how Apple have forced Mac upgrades for the last 20 years, there is no way round it other than to comply and buy yourself a new Mac.
Does Xcode 26 still work on Sequoia? They usually stop supporting N-1 around March.
It does. The latest officially supported Xcode version runnable on Sequoia is 26.3. See https://developer.apple.com/xcode/system-requirements/
But it is possible to run even the latest Xcode 26.6 by directly executing Xcode.app/Contents/MacOS/Xcode, and Xcode will run. This trick doesn't work with Xcode 27 anymore though. If you try that, you'll see a warning message that says something like "Xcode requires macOS 26 to run".
I started de-googling a long time ago, part of it was an iPhone (12 mini), 5 years later I really felt like de-Appling as well. The Appstore is a cesspool, privacy concerns are about the same as Google now (or perhaps always were?).
I went with GrapheneOS. Very good experience, but not without Google Play (store and services). It's all sandboxed, so presumably I'm only leaking consciously chosen data. It's really aimed at security, not so much de-googling. Something like Murena's /e/OS is much more aimed at de-Googling, but as GrapheneOS devs will usually be quick to point out here, they are "quite poor" with their security.
A de-Googled functional appstore on a FairPhone (+ with all the GrapheneOS required security bells and wistles) would be ideal for me. But it's still either optimal security focussed OR de-Googling/de-big-teching focused. Yes there is f-droid, but there are too many apps that require the Google services (like banking).
Atm 1 app does not work, one of my banking apps required the highest tier of Google control. I will happily install on devices that have been years without security updates though :s
Overall the GrapheneOS experience (base launcher etc) is very clean, fast, minimal, ad free.