It turns out that the storage requirements for Apple Intelligence the on device AI system the company rolled out across iPhones, iPads and Macs has grown exponentially. The feature was rolled out on iOS 18.1 and required 4GB of free space before the AI models necessary to the privacy-first roll could load on the device itself instead of in the cloud. Unless you don’t mind bluffs and significant redecline chances for those limits, this is already nearly double the requirement of 7GB per device, with the release of iOS 18.2.
The increase applies to any and all compatible Apple devices, as Apple Intelligence is rolled out to users’ iPhones, iPads, and Macs, so there’s no individual ‘Passbook’ to cleanse of its data, users will require a total of 21GB of free storage (21GB of total available space). Unfortunately, you can’t do this by disabling some features because you need the AI models to work the system.
This newly prioritized on device processing will offer greater privacy and faster responses, however, with significant storage space a requirement. And this trend is only expected to continue with improvement in Apple Intelligence. In that case, so long as iOS 18.3 doesn’t do much to bolster AI functionality, the impending iOS 18.4 rollout in April will no doubt bring sizable Siri upgrades and bump storage requirements to 10GB per device.
Storage demands look set to climb further still with the arrival of iOS 19 on the horizon. However, for users with storage constraints, this presents an obstacle – especially since these requirements render increasingly impractical devices with low storage capacities.
The takeaway? If you will be making an investment in a new iPhone, iPad, or Mac, it’s probably best to invest in higher tiers of storage. With a growing Apple Intelligence ecosystem, however, storing as much as possible will be crucial to fully harnessing the power of the Apple AI driven ecosystem.
