Apple Intelligence will be released soon as part of iOS 18.1. When it does, you may need to free up additional storage on your iPhone. Here are the storage requirements for Apple Intelligence at launch and why they will increase over time.

4GB storage requirement from iPhone 16

According to a document published by Apple and included in the latest beta version of iOS 18.1, Apple Intelligence will have a certain memory footprint when it launches.

The Supported Devices section of the document states:

Apple Intelligence is available on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, all iPhone 16 models, and iPad and Mac models with M1 and later. iPhone devices require 4GB of storage*.

Now we know that 4GB of storage is required to install and use Apple Intelligence features. This is in addition to the space required to install the iOS 18.1 update itself.

Interestingly, the 4 GB storage requirement is only mentioned for iPhones.

Maybe there are different requirements for iPads and Macs. Or there is another reason why Apple has chosen not to share this information.

You may have noticed the asterisk at the end of the quote. That's because 4GB is just the starting point for the first set of AI features.

More memory is required for future Apple Intelligence features

The footnote at the end of Apple's documentation states: “Storage requirements for on-device Apple Intelligence models will increase as more features are introduced.”

It's unclear how much additional memory additional AI models will require. I wouldn't be surprised if the initial memory requirement doubles over time, rising to 8GB next year.

However, if you tend to keep your iPhone storage pretty full, it might be time to figure out how to free up space. Or, if you're in the market for a new iPhone 16 or 16 Pro, maybe avoid the 128GB options this year.

Are you concerned about Apple Intelligence’s memory footprint? Let us know in the comments.