Users who have updated their iPhones to iOS 27 are reporting that Apple-intelligence/">Apple Intelligence can occupy a substantial amount of internal storage. The allocation varies by device, with some users seeing around 16GB become unavailable and others reporting approximately 9GB. In many cases, the space is reserved even when Apple Intelligence cannot be used in the user’s region, including the European Union.
The impact can be more significant on older iPhones with limited capacity. Some 128GB iPhone 16 units reportedly have about 30% of their storage taken up by iOS and AI-related files, in addition to space reserved for future updates.
Turning off Apple Intelligence or Siri does not appear to restore the storage. Changing the Apple Account region is also not recommended, as doing so may require users to cancel subscriptions or spend any remaining account balance before switching regions.
A workaround reported by Reddit users involves changing Siri’s language to an unsupported English variant. Apple Intelligence and Siri reportedly work with US or UK English, while selecting Canadian, Irish, South African or New Zealand English can significantly reduce the local AI allocation. The change does not remove the issue completely, but it can bring the occupied space down to around 100MB.
Testing with South African English reportedly resolved the storage problem after an iPhone reboot. The reports come as Apple is also promoting its iCloud storage service more aggressively, encouraging customers to subscribe and back up their data to iCloud.
Sources: GSMArena.