How to turn off Apple Intelligence on your iPhone

It’s getting harder and harder to avoid AI when you open your phone or laptop – as soon as I started this article in Google Docs, I was immediately offered some AI assistance to write it (which I didn’t take). And with the rollout of Apple Intelligencewhich now also applies to iPhones, iPads and Macs.

But if you don’t see much value in the Apple Intelligence features that have been launched so far, you’re not alone: ​​about three quarters of iPhone owners can’t see what all the fuss is about. according to a recent survey. It is also worth keeping in mind that these AI add-ons take 7 GB of local storage (and counting) on ​​any device you want to use.

The good news is that Apple Intelligence is both opt-in and reasonably easy to turn off, which is not something every company does with its AI tools (looking at you, Google and Microsoft). So you find features like Writing tools and mangled notification summaries superfluous to your needs, you can disable it.

Assuming you’ve already turned it on, here’s how to turn off specific Apple Intelligence features. And if you really don’t like it, here’s how to turn it off completely.

(The steps listed below were tested on an iPhone 15 Pro Max with iOS 18.2. You’ll find similar options available on iPadOS and macOS.)

Most, but not all Apple Intelligence features can be turned off individually. Open it Settings on your iPhone, and you will find a menu dedicated to Apple Intelligence and Siri. After that, it depends on what you want to disable.

Tap ChatGPT extension to enable or disable extra AI intelligence that ChatGPT can add to Siri when you ask for answers.

The AI ​​notification summaries that have recently got Apple into trouble can also be disabled individually. From the iOS settings, choose Notifications > Summary Notifications to disable the feature. You can also activate it for some apps but not for others from the same screen.

You can disable Writing and Image Creation Tools, but you have to go through it Screen Time in Settings:

• Tap Content and Privacy Restrictions.
• Set off Content and Privacy Restrictions.
• Tap Intelligence and Siri.
• Tap Image Creation o Writing toolsso what Don’t allow it.

It’s a bit of a clumsy fix – this is really more to prevent kids from cheating on their homework – but it works. You won’t have pop-up options to rewrite the text, and you won’t be able to create a new Genmoji. Open the Image Playground app on iOS, and the option to create new photos will be blocked (although you can access the ones you’ve saved).

The AI-powered prioritization of messages in Apple Mail is another feature that you can disable yourself – or, more precisely, hide from view.

• Inside your Mail app Inboxtap the three dots in the top right.
• Switch to View list and turn it off Show priority.

Your inbox will be returned to the way it was before the arrival of Apple Intelligence.

That doesn’t leave much in terms of Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.2 that you can’t specifically disable. There’s the Clean Up tool in Photos and the Intelligent Breakthrough feature in Focus, but you can easily ignore these options if you don’t need them.

If you really don’t want anything to do with Apple Intelligence, and you’ve already turned it on, you can turn it off completely.

• Open it Settings > Apple Intelligence and Siri.
• Look for the Apple Intelligence toggle switch at the top to fully enable or disable all Apple Intelligence features currently available on your iPhone.

The first time you turned on this toggle switch—assuming you did—iOS downloaded the AI ​​models needed for local processing to your phone. These models, which occupy 7GB or more of space, will then remain on your iPhone in the future, regardless of whether you have Apple Intelligence activated.

If you want to disable Apple Intelligence and free up the space used by local iOS models, you need to reset your iPhone and start from scratch without activating Apple Intelligence during installation. You can do this from Settings by selecting General > Transfer or reset iPhone > Erase all content and SettingsSince this will, of course, wipe everything on your phone, secure all your important data safely saved.

For now, at least, you have a lot of control when it comes to which Apple Intelligence features are active. We know, however, that they are there many more AI updates on the wayso we have to wait and see if Apple Intelligence remains an optional extra for the iPhone.