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Users report that an AI feature in iOS 27 occupies up to 16 gigabytes of storage space, even when disabled or unavailable.
Numerous iPhone users are complaining that the AI feature Apple Intelligence under iOS 27 occupies an unusually large portion of local storage space, even if they do not use the feature at all or cannot yet access it in their region. So far, there is no simple way to reclaim the storage space.
Up to 16 Gigabytes Without Apparent Benefit
Affected users report figures between 9 and 16 gigabytes that Apple Intelligence claims on their devices. On the Reddit platform, one user shared: “Before I updated to iOS 27, I had 25 GB of free storage. Now it’s 5.6 GB. I have nothing left to delete on my phone. Apple, what are you doing?” The specialized editorial team at Cybernews also verified the effect on their own iPhone 15 Pro Max, where Siri and Apple Intelligence were disabled throughout: The device nevertheless displayed 11.59 gigabytes of occupied storage for Apple Intelligence, meaning the entire iOS system accounted for more than 10 percent of the total storage on a 256-gigabyte model.
Users in regions where the AI-powered version of Siri is currently not available at all appear to be affected as well. A user from the EU, where the AI version of Siri is not offered for legal reasons, nevertheless reported 15.3 gigabytes of occupied storage.
No Simple Way to Reclaim Space
According to consistent user reports, merely disabling Siri or Apple Intelligence in the settings does not automatically free up the occupied storage space.
Language Change as a Workaround
A workaround gaining traction in user forums involves changing the Siri language to a variant that is currently not officially supported. According to Apple, the AI version of Siri is unavailable in the EU, does not work in China, and is regularly only available when both the device and Siri languages are set to English. Users report that selecting British, Canadian, Irish, or New Zealand English for Siri or the device region significantly reduces the storage footprint of the AI feature; for one user, changing to British English dropped the storage usage to just 126 megabytes.
In a test by the Cybernews editorial team, changing the Siri language to Dutch and subsequently restarting the device reduced the occupied storage from 11.59 to 5.03 gigabytes. Changing the country or region setting of the Apple account itself is discouraged, as this may require canceling existing subscriptions and spending any remaining account balance.
Additional Frustration Over Promotional Notices
In parallel, users are complaining about persistently displayed, non-dismissible notices in the settings advertising iCloud+ storage, free trial periods for services like Apple Music and Apple TV, and the extended warranty AppleCare+. The notices appear both directly on the Settings app icon and prominently near the top inside the Settings app itself.
(Editorial Team)
