Apple Intelligence now takes up almost twice as much room on your iPhone as it used to

Apple Intelligence needs 7GB now, up from 4GB
The increase is due to new features in iOS 18.2
Expect the requirements to go up even further

Over the last year or so we’ve heard plenty about Apple Intelligence and how it’s going to transform the way we use our Apple devices – and it seems the AI tech is also going to take up more internal storage on those devices too.

As spotted by 9to5Mac, the recently launched iOS 18.2 update needs 7GB of free local storage to install Apple Intelligence, according to Apple’s website. When the AI features started appearing in iOS 18.1, the requirement was 4GB.

It’s no surprise that the iOS 18.2 update requires so much more space on your device: it includes a wealth of new AI tricks, including the integration of ChatGPT with the Siri smart assistant, Genmoji, and Visual Intelligence.

The first batch of Apple Intelligence features that showed up with iOS 18.1 back in October included Writing Tools and Notification Summaries. These upgrades are going to continue to show up gradually as we make our way towards iOS 19 next year.

More to come

Apple Intelligence on iOS

Apple Intelligence is an optional extra (Image credit: Apple)

Apple likes as much of its AI to run locally as possible: not relying on the cloud means faster response times and improved user privacy. As we’re now seeing though, there is a cost in terms of storage space.

You can turn off Apple Intelligence if you want to: the setting is under Apple Intelligence & Siri on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. You can also choose to not install it in the first place, because it’s not enabled by default on these devices.

However, you can’t pick and choose the AI features you want: It’s all or nothing. If you’re running low on storage space on your device, then you may have to think twice about having Apple Intelligence enabled (or buy some more iCloud storage space, of course).

And it’s likely that Apple Intelligence will demand even more storage space as we go through 2025: it’s expected that iOS 18.4 will bring with it a host of new AI updates, including smarter features for Siri.

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