Apple Intelligence: Apple no longer hides memory usage
Was it perhaps just a bug? In the first betas of macOS 15.4, it was not possible to see how many GBytes Apple Intelligence required. Now the display is back.
Apple Intelligence logo and icon.
(Image: Apple)
Apple has re-enabled a display that briefly disappeared showing how much memory is being used for its AI system Apple Intelligence on the Mac. This was reported by users of the latest beta 4 of macOS 15.4. There is now speculation as to whether Apple really wanted to turn off the function – or whether it was possibly just a bug.
Apple Intelligence is not without controversy
The iPhone manufacturer is currently trying quite aggressively to get users to use Apple Intelligence, which will also be available in German from April. This includes, for example, turning the function on again after an iOS update despite it having been switched off beforehand – and a warning dialog on the Mac when it is switched off, which is written in a dangerously red font (which could be described as a dark pattern). However, there are good reasons not to use Apple Intelligence. The main advantage of the writing tools and image generators over competing systems is that they are built directly into the system – and are (at most) equal or inferior in quality.
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However, the AI system takes up a lot of memory, which can be a real problem, especially with smaller Macs or cheaper iPhones. It was therefore important to be able to see how much space Apple Intelligence was using. On the Mac, this was easily possible until macOS 15.3.2 if you clicked on macOS in the storage space display in the system settings. The AI system had its own sub-item there. As of macOS 15.4 Beta 1, the entry suddenly disappeared and only the amount of SSD space taken up by macOS including Apple Intelligence was visible.
Fix in macOS 15.4 Beta 4
With the release of macOS 15.4 Beta 4, which has been available since last Monday, the situation has now improved. If you click into the system settings, you can once again see what Apple Intelligence is using within macOS in the memory usage area – and this can easily be over 10 GB, even though Apple has always stated that it was around 7 GB.
Macrumors now speculates that Apple had a problem with System Integrity Protection (SIP) in the early beta versions. As it turned out, users who had explicitly deactivated SIP on developer machines, for example, were able to see the Apple Intelligence assignment. SIP is actually intended to prevent system-related programs from running without user consent. A reboot is required to deactivate SIP.
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