GoKawiilEdgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR Google has updated its support documentation to show that downloading the models that power Chrome’s on-device AI features requires approximately 20 gigabytes of available storage space.
The install size of the models is still approximately 4 GB, Google has confirmed.
You can disable Chrome’s on-device AI features in the browser’s settings.
Google’s been working for a while to integrate Gemini more deeply into Chrome for some time now. Some users were confused and annoyed this spring when Chrome started automatically downloading a multi-gigabyte file called weights.bin that enables Gemini Nano features to run locally. Now, Google’s updated its documentation to reflect that you’ll actually need quite a bit more free space to actually download the files required for local AI features.
As spotted by Windows Report (via PiunikaWeb), the Google Chrome Help Center entry about the browser’s on-device generative AI models has been updated to reflect that you’ll need approximately 20 gigs of free disk space to install the models that power local AI features. You’ll also need an unmetered data connection, plus “Sufficient device performance.”
We don’t know what exactly sufficient performance means in this context, but Google’s documentation makes clear that Chrome will only attempt to download the models required for local AI features if your machine makes the cut.
Twenty gigs might not be much for devices with ample built-in storage, but if your laptop’s SSD only holds 128 or 256 GB, that’s a significant chunk of the storage space you have to work with. Google tells Android Authority that the models themselves will still only take up about 4 GB of storage space once installed, but the models won’t download at all unless you’ve got about 20 gigs free.
For reference, with on-device AI features disabled, my Mac lists the storage used by the Chrome browser at about 1.5 GB — less than 10% of the space required to enable on-device AI, and less than half the space on-device AI models occupy.
Google warns that manually uninstalling the files related to local AI features won’t disable the features or prevent future downloads related to on-device AI. To turn the features off altogether, you can head to Chrome’s settings, then System. There, you’ll see a toggle for On-device AI. Turning that toggle off will uninstall local models and prevent them from being re-installed.
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