When Apple released the second macOS 15.4 beta earlier this month, it made a change that means system settings no longer show how much local storage space Apple Intelligence features take up on a Mac.

In macOS Equiquoia 15.3.1, Mac users using Apple chips can find out how much space any installed Apple Intelligence feature takes up on their hard drive by going into System Settings ➝ General ➝ Storage and clicking the circled "i" button next to macOS.

That hasn't been the case since the release of beta 2 of Apple's upcoming macOS Sequoia 15.4 update. No further details are now provided to explain the storage space taken up locally by macOS when the user clicks the "i" button.

However, if the user disables System Integrity Protection (SIP), the system settings will reliably display this information again. For those unfamiliar, SIP protects the entire system by preventing unauthorized code execution and can only be disabled by entering recovery mode. The ability to disable SIP is useful for developers testing applications, but is generally not recommended for most users.

According to iOS developer @b3lla_dev, unless SIP is disabled, there is no way to view the system resource usage of Apple Intelligence assets, which also has the knock-on effect of making it impossible for the System Settings app to retrieve the file size of said assets.

AppleIntelligence utilizes a framework called MobileAsset to manage and deliver machine learning models and related assets to Apple devices. The framework dynamically downloads and updates necessary components, ensuring devices can access the latest features without the need for a full system update. According to the official support page, Apple Intelligence assets require up to 7GB of storage space on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

When storage space is tight, 7GB is a large number, which will inevitably affect users' decisions about whether to enable Apple Intelligence. It's unclear whether this is a factor in Apple's decision to effectively hide the local storage footprint of its suite of AI features, but users will draw their own conclusions.

Perris has submitted a feedback report to Apple informing them of this change that is still present in the latest Beta 3. Apple plans to release macOS Sequoia 15.4 in early April.