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default settings – How do I disable all AI features in Chrome? – Super User

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/05/11

Few places have the configuration for various platforms on how to prevent Google Chrome from installing the 4GB LLM model that got traction over the last few days. Luckily it is at [Wayback/Archive] default settings – How do I disable all AI features in Chrome? – Super User (thanks [Wayback/Archive] A-Tech and [Wayback/Archive] cachius):

A

… The on-device model is available since 2024 and was treated on superuser.com in November 2025¹.

Since² January 2026 there’s³ the toggle Settings > System > On-device AI in Chrome Canary, yet to be released in Stable channel. Until then use the policy setting GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings⁴ to disable and delete the local model with:

# 1st variant targets current user and keeps settings mechanism intact
# 2nd variant as admin targets whole machine and greys out corresponding settings entry

# Windows
reg.exe add HKCU\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome\Recommended /v GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg.exe add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome /v GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

# macOS
defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.google.Chrome.plist GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings -int 1
defaults write "/Library/Managed Preferences/com.google.Chrome.plist" GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings -int 1

# Linux
echo '{"GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings":1}' > /etc/opt/chrome/policies/recommended/disable-local-llm.json
echo '{"GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings":1}' > /etc/opt/chrome/policies/managed/disable-local-llm.json

Check effective policies with chrome://policy/ in address bar.

In the answer above, I numbered the referenced links so I can list them below with their archived versions:

  1. [Wayback/Archive] Can I delete the Chrome’s OptGuideOnDeviceModel safely? It’s taking up 4GB – Super User
  2. [Wayback/Archive] Google Chrome now lets you turn off on-device AI model powering scam detection
  3. [Wayback/Archive] Manage on-device Generative AI models in Chrome – Google Chrome Help
  4. [Wayback/Archive] Chrome Enterprise Policy List & Management | Documentation

There are other bothering settings which you might want to disable. For that, use [Wayback/Archive] Just the Browser:

Remove AI features, telemetry data reporting, sponsored content, product integrations, and other annoyances from web browsers.

That site, the scripts and configuration files are open source at [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – corbindavenport/just-the-browser: Remove AI features, telemetry data reporting, sponsored content, product integrations, and other annoyances from web browsers. · GitHub, of which the Chrome specific content is at [Wayback/Archive] just-the-browser/chrome/README.md at main · corbindavenport/just-the-browser · GitHub.

The traction all started with [Wayback/Archive] Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. — That Privacy Guy!

Amplification was for instance done by

Via

  1. [Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers: “@LarsFosdal @fredahrens that’s…” – Mastodon
    @LarsFosdal @fredahrens that’s why I asked (;
    Super User user
    cachius posted a solution on how to disable disable all AI features in Chrome for Windows/MacOS/Linux at either user level or system level at
    https://superuser.com/a/1937377/14061
    This effectively blocks this 4 GB local LLM.

    Lars boosted [Wayback/Archive] Vivaldi Browser: “By now you’ve all probably hea…” – Vivaldi Social

    By now you’ve all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don’t, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/googl…e-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
    Our team has been inspecting the Chromium code and disabling stuff from the very first version of Vivaldi (we have some posts about this in our blog, such as https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no…-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ or https://vivaldi.com/blog/no-google-viv…aldi-users-will-not-get-floced/).
    We’ve also been very outspoken about our dislike of the built-in AI trend in the browser industry, but in case there’s still any doubts: yes, we disable all Gemini-related features, and we’ve been doing it for a while.
    Which referenced these:
    1. [Wayback/Archive] Chrome’s AI features may be hogging 4GB of your computer storage | The Verge
    2. [Wayback/Archive] Alert: No Google Topics in Vivaldi Browser
    3. [Wayback/Archive] No, Google! Vivaldi users will not get FloC’ed. | Vivaldi Browser

    and is regularly updated: [Wayback/Archive] Corbin Davenport: “New update for my Just the Browser…” – toot.community

    Corbin Davenport@corbin@toot.community

    New update for my Just the Browser project! If you install any of the browser configurations on Windows, they are added to the system’s Installed apps list. You can delete them from that screen as well.

    The Linux version also now correctly detects Chromium from the Debian repositories.

    Check it out: justthebrowser.com

  2. [Wayback/Archive] defaults write com.google.Chrome GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings at DuckDuckGo (this was a lucky guess because I hoped defaults write would also be used by Chrome and the logical name for that would be com.google.Chrome and the key mentioned by El Reg for Windows would also be used on other platforms)

I need to check out if Vivaldi supports manifest V2 extensions, as that’s what I use Edge for.

--jeroen

This entry was posted on 2026/05/11 at 18:00 and is filed under AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Chrome, Development, Google, LLM, Power User, Software Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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