Ask HN: Is it impossible to disable Siri on macOS 27?

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

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.

The process that shows the Spotlight UI is now the one called "Siri", previously it was called "Spotlight".

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.

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.

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_...

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.

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.

The absolute arrogance of taking up this much disk space for an application that most serious users will simply never engage with. Garbage.

I've love to disable Apple Intelligence just to get the space back. It's murdering my Mac Mini.

Resistance is futile.

Maybe "macOS 27: Workaround to avoid downloading AI models and save storage":

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49787535

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49787535

> 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)?

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.

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

You can move over to Microsoft and use Copilot or if that isn’t enough, you can buy a new Googlebook laptop.

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.

Garbage like this is why I'm never going back to a proprietary OS. I remember being unable to kill Cortana on Windows (it would automatically restart itself) being the last straw.

Sequoia will be taken from my cold dead hands.

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

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

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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.

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