How to Turn Off Apple Intelligence on iPhone: Step-by-Step Guide

Apple Intelligence has been baked into eligible iPhones since iOS 18.1 and while some AI features are helpful, most users want to turn them off for various reasons. Notifications Summaries often show inaccurate results, AI features take up huge storage, and there are some privacy concerns too as your private data is sent to the cloud. So, if you are looking for a comprehensive guide to turn off Apple Intelligence on iPhones, follow our detailed guide below.

Turn Off All Apple Intelligence Features on Your iPhone

The good news is that Apple offers a master toggle to disable nearly all Apple Intelligence features on iPhones, similar to how you can turn off Galaxy AI features on Samsung phones. It will disable Writing Tools, Notification Summaries, Genmoji, Image Playground, Visual Intelligence, ChatGPT integration with Siri, and more. Here are the steps to follow.

1. Launch the Settings app and select Apple Intelligence & Siri.
2. Here, turn off the Apple Intelligence toggle.
3. Now, confirm your action by tapping on Turn Off Apple Intelligence.

And that's it. Your iPhone will now run without any AI features running in the background. And the best part is that up to 7GB of valuable storage also frees up on your iPhone since the on-device AI models are removed.

Turn Off Specific Apple Intelligence Features on Your iPhone

If you don't want to disable all Apple Intelligence features, you can turn them off individually, based on what you prefer to use and what you find unhelpful. Let's start with Notification Summaries.

Disable Notification Summaries on iPhone

Notification summaries are arguably the most controversial Apple Intelligence feature as they often get it wrong. If you don't want AI to condense your messages, and would rather prefer to see the original message, disable it entirely for all apps.

1. Open Settings and select Notifications.
2. Now, select Summarise Notifications and turn off the Summarise Notifications toggle on the next screen. This will disable notification summaries for all apps.

Turn Off Message Summaries in Messages and Mail

If you find summaries useful for certain apps but not for Messages and Mail, you can turn them off on a per-app basis.

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone and navigate to Apps > Messages.
2. Here, turn off the Summarise Messages toggle.
3. Similarly, head back to the Apps screen, select the Mail app and turn off the Summarise Messages toggle there.

Disable Priority Notifications on iPhone

Apple Intelligence can determine which notifications are important and show them at the top of your notification stack. If you don't want AI deciding what deserves your attention first, you can disable it by following the steps below.

1. Launch the Settings app inside iOS and select Notifications.
2. Now, tap on Prioritise Notifications and turn off the Prioritise Notifications toggle.

Disable ChatGPT Integration with Siri

With Apple Intelligence, Siri can hand off queries to ChatGPT when it doesn't have an answer. If you don't want any OpenAI involvement on your iPhone, you can easily turn this off. Note that Siri will continue to work even without the ChatGPT extension. By the way, Apple is reportedly opening Siri to all AI chatbots, not just ChatGPT with the upcoming iOS 27 update.

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone and select Apple Intelligence & Siri.
2. Under the "Extensions" section, select ChatGPT.
3. Now, turn off the Use ChatGPT toggle at the top.

Turn off Type to Siri on iPhone

Apple Intelligence added a Type to Siri features which lets you type queries to Siri by double-tapping the bottom of the screen. If you keep accidentally triggering it, here is how to disable this AI feature.

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone and tap on Apple Intelligence & Siri.
2. Here, select Talk & Type to Siri and turn off the Type to Siri toggle.

Block Apple Intelligence features via Screen Time

This method is especially useful if you want to hard-block certain AI features on your child's iPhone so they can't be re-enabled easily. Screen Time lets you restrict three specific Apple Intelligence features. Follow the below steps.

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone and navigate to Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions.

2. After that, tap on Intelligence & Siri.
3. Once here, you can select the tools you want to turn off from these options – Writing Tools, Image Creation, and Intelligence Extensions.
4. Inside each of these tools, choose Don't Allow to disable that particular feature.

Delete the Image Playground app from your iPhone

Image Playground is Apple's generative AI image creation app, and it also powers Genmoji. Since it's a standalone app, you can simply delete it from your iPhone like any other app. It will remove the ability to create Genmoji and use Image Wand in the Notes app. Here is how to do so.

1. Long-press on the Image Playground app from the home screen or App Library and choose Remove App.
2. Now, choose Delete App and the app will uninstalled from your iPhone right away.

And that's how you can disable or reduce AI features on your iPhone, running iOS 26. Note that your core iPhone experience remains completely intact and everything works as usual including calls, messages, apps, camera, and photos. Not to mention, you also free up to 7GB of storage, which is nice. Also, after every major iOS update, it's recommended to check Apple Intelligence setting as some users have reported that it's automatically re-enabled.