Let's say you deleted your photos, cleared your cache, and uninstalled your biggest games, and somehow your system storage is still eating 30GB or more on your phone. Why should you have to get rid of all of your precious memories just for your OS to supposedly take up the biggest percentage of your phone's built-in storage?

In recent years, Android has shifted towards on-device AI to make AI work without an internet connection. This has led Google to ship a massive multi-gigabyte database for its store to your phone. By disabling AICore, you aren't just stopping a background process; you're actually deleting a massive 7GB LLM file that you probably aren't even using, freeing up more storage on your phone so you can download as many games as you want and record in 4K in peace.

How to get rid of AICore

You're likely not using it anyway

So, what exactly is an AICore? It can be defined as the bridge between your phone's hardware and the Gemini Nano AI model. So, if your phone has Gemini by Google built in, it's likely that an AICore has been shipped onto your device without you even realizing it.

In return, it takes up a massive 7GB or sometimes more because it downloads a foundation model in the background. It's a major data block that sits in your system partition and likely isn't being touched. You might be thinking, "Wait, I actually use Gemini," but disabling AICore does not kill the main Gemini app.

Gemini, the chatbot, runs in the cloud, whereas AICore is for offline features such as GBoard smart replies and summaries in the recorder app. AICore allows these features to run even without an internet connection, and for most users, this isn't necessary at all. By disabling AICore, you're losing access to these offline features that you probably weren't using anyway.

You can't just uninstall AICore normally, as it's a system application. To uninstall it, head to Settings, then the Apps section, and See All Apps. Next, find AICore in this list. You may need to tap the three dots in the corner, then select Show System, so it actually displays your system applications.

Tap Disable, then touch the Three Dots in the top-right corner and select Uninstall Updates. This last step actually deletes the 7GB model file and reverts the app to its factory-default stub, so it doesn't take up a massive chunk of your system storage.

You get back more than just storage space

Free up RAM and speed up your phone

Now, let me be transparent here: there are some trade-offs, and some features will stop working. However, for me, this was totally worth it. Pixel screenshots will no longer be able to read your screenshots without an internet connection. Magic Compose will switch itself off, so you won't get any more AI-suggested rewrites in Google Messages. Recorder Summaries offline usage will also stop, meaning you won't be able to summarize audio transcripts without an internet connection. You may also encounter features that aren't available when you're offline.

Given I'm someone who rarely finds themselves without the internet, losing access to these features when offline is totally fine by me. For most users, these features will be used once and then forgotten. For a phone with 128GB of storage, 7GB is a massive price to pay for a smart reply that you never actually click.

Beyond the storage, AI Core is a known memory hog. Turning it off frees up RAM that the LLM was using for pre-loading, making the UI feel slightly snappier on your phone. You also have the privacy side effect. For those who are privacy-conscious, killing the on-device indexer means the operating system isn't constantly scanning your local data to provide private contextual AI suggestions.

Stop deleting your pictures

Get rid of useless apps you aren't using

You bought a phone for your files, not to host a massive AI model you didn't ask for. So reclaim your storage capacity. And in turn, if you ever decide you want the AI features back, enable the app again, and it will redownload the model and restore access to all the features you lost.

But for now, enjoy the 7GB of extra room for things that actually matter to you all, while never thinking about those features you lost ever again because you were never actually using them in the first place.