macOS 15.4 makes it harder to see how much storage Apple Intelligence uses

In macOS 15.3 and early versions, you can see easily how much storage space Apple Intelligence takes up on your Mac in the Storage settings. However, Apple seems to have changed this behavior with the second macOS 15.4 beta and hasn’t changed it in the recently released beta 3.

To see this info, go to System Settings > General > Storage > macOS and click the “i” icon. If you’re not running the beta, you should see an info box like the one at the top of this article. If you are running the beta, you may see what MacRumors’ aaronp613 posted on X.

X/aaronp613

There is a way to make the info appear, though, and it requires disabling SIP, according to b3lla_dev. SIP stands for System Integrity Protection, and it is a security measure in macOS that “prevents the execution of unauthorized code,” according to Apple.

To turn off SIP, you need to boot into Recovery Mode and we have instructions on how you can do that. Once there, you launch Terminal, type csrutil disable at the prompt, then press Return. You then need to enter a username and password that has Administrator rights, and then wait a bit while the task runs. When it’s done, restart the Mac and you can then see Apple Intelligence’s storage allocation.

Apple doesn’t recommend using your Mac with SIP off for an extended period of time because it’s a form of security that’s no longer in place, making your Mac vulnerable. To turn Recovery Mode on, repeat the steps in Recovery Mode but instead enter csrutil enable in Terminal.

Depending on how you feel about Apple Intelligence, there’s a bit of irony in the idea that SIP hides its storage allocation. A few posts in response to aaronp613 are calling this behavior in the macOS 15.4 beta a bug, but it doesn’t appear to be. You now have to resort to extraordinary steps to see the info.

Apple Intelligence takes up about 5GB of space, which is a lot, even if you have a 1TB SSD. But turning Apple Intelligence off (System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri) doesn’t fully remove all components from storage. When I turned it off in macOS 15.3.1, the Apple Intelligence storage allocation went from 5.21GB to 3.03GB.

macOS 15.4 is expected to arrive in April.