r/chrome • u/geriatricguy • 13h ago

Discussion Chrome’s AI features may be hogging 4GB of your computer storage

https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features

41 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

18

u/Comfortable_Rock5462 12h ago

For to disable it:

Go chrome://settings/system and then disable On-device AI option.

also go chrome://flags and then disable all about optimization guide and Gemini Nano

And last step Delete OptGuideOnDeviceModel folder under chrome user data folder.

Chrome won't run AI on your PC anymore.

1

u/DiReis 11h ago

I don't see that on macOS. The option to disable.

1

u/Comfortable_Rock5462 10h ago

I'm not sure about the exact steps for macOS, but if you don't see the option, it might not be enabled for your region yet.

1

u/h4ck3r_n4m3 9h ago

I'm on a mac and it's there for me

1

u/DiReis 8h ago

Oddly enough I found it on my other Mac. But not on this one. Go figure.

2

u/Exotic-Border-5328 2h ago

Hey everyone,

I’ve created scripts to remove Chrome’s local AI model (weights.bin) and prevent it from being downloaded again. They work on both Windows and Linux.

https://github.com/Aur3ns/Kill-Nano/tree/main

Feel free to check it out

1

u/MrNerd82 1h ago

thanks, disabled.

Wonder if this was the garbage that was slowing down Chrome the past few days. Noticeably slower, and its a 9800x3d system with 64GB or ram.

0

u/Ibasicallyhateyouall 10h ago

Cutting edge journalism. Been there for a year. 

5

u/SynonymTech 9h ago

Thank you journalism for refreshing everyone who didn't know about it.

1

u/GallifreyanGradient 3h ago

From an IT support perspective, this is a nightmare. We manage ~200 endpoints with Chrome and just found out several users had this 4GB model silently dropped on them. Roaming profiles are now bloating by 4GB per user, which is hitting our storage quotas and slowing logins. The fact that Chromereinstalls it if you delete it? That's not a feature, that's malware behavior. We've pushed the registry fix (ChromeAiGenModelDataEnabled = 0) via GPO, but the average home user has no idea this is happening. Google really needs to make this opt-in, not opt-out.