There’s a secret way to free up 7GB of storage in your iPhone

By Patrick Hearn Published January 28, 2025

If you constantly run out of space on your iOS device, you could free up as much as 7GB of data just by disabling Apple Intelligence. The iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3 updates released this past week enabled Intelligence by default, but it isn’t a requirement — and if you don’t want to use it or would prefer the free space, you can turn it off.

On average, Apple Intelligence requires around 7GB of storage space regardless of platform. The reason for this relatively large requirement — especially when the operating system itself takes up a decent amount of storage — is because Apple runs the Intelligence features on-device. This ensures greater levels of security, but it also means less memory. This is a 7GB requirement per device, according to MacRumors.

This requirement is likely to only get bigger, too. Apple is scheduled to release the next version of iOS in April with expanded AI functionality, so even more space might be dedicated to AI.

Of course, this trick only works if you’re using a compatible iPhone, and the amount of data already on your phone also plays a role. During testing, we found that the freed-up gigabytes would become available much more quickly if your phone was close to full capacity. Phones with a lot of storage space still available took longer to register the change.

Apple Intelligence offers a lot of functionality, but not everyone is fully onboard with AI features. If you find yourself deleting a few apps each time you want to install a new one, it might be worth disabling those features for the extra storage.

Interested? Here’s how. Just go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > iOS to see how much space Apple Intelligence takes up on your device. You can then go Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri > Apple Intelligence and swap the toggle to Off.

And that’s all it takes. That 7GB should be enough to download the majority of apps, with the exception of larger games and productivity-focused tools.