How to enable Apple Intelligence on an External Drive. (macOS Tahoe and newer.)

This version of the blog post has been updated for macOS Tahoe. Disabling SIP is now a requirement.

If you’ve tried enabling Apple Intelligence on a supported Mac on macOS 26 or newer, but are booting off of an external drive, you’ll be shown this:

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOSBeta/comments/1ery9oc/macos_151db2_apple_intelligence_not_available/

Apple doesn’t allow you to use Apple Intelligence when macOS is installed on an external volume, and inexplicably so. I don’t really know why this is disabled, while it’s likely the same reason as why Apple Pay doesn’t work on external drives it’s certainly not because of a technical limitation— and I’ll show you how to get it running.

This is going to take under five minutes.

Disclosure:

This process involves modifying a file on the system so we can trick it into thinking that your external drive is actually an internal drive. This cannot be done unless we disable System Integrity Protection (SIP). Fortunately, the good news is that you can turn it back on after you're done.

Let's get started.

Step 1: Power off your Mac.

Step 2: While turning it back on, keeping holding the Power Button until it says "Loading startup options..." Then, release it.

Step 3: Enter Recovery Mode by clicking "Options:"

Source: Apple

Step 4: On the menu bar on the top left of your screen, click Utilities -> Terminal

Step 5: Type in "csrutil disable" and choose the disk that you have connected externally. You will be prompted for your password.

Source: Wondershare

Step 6: Reboot your Mac into your external drive as normal.

Step 7: Open Finder, and Click ⌘ + Shift + G

Step 8: Now, enter this path into the pop up:

/private/var/db/eligibilityd/eligibility.plist

This will open up the finder with the link to the eligibility.plist file, which contains the data about whether this Mac is booting from an external drive or not— alongside other criteria that determine your eligibility for using Apple Intelligence.

Step 9: Download the corrected version of the eligibility file from here: https://gist.github.com/OmChachad/6dc7e62623aafce185cc310b1f3d0766

Step 4: Delete the eligibility file from the Folder. It may ask you for your password or Touch ID.

Step 5: Instantly paste the file you downloaded into the eligibilityd folder.

Step 6: Right click the newly pasted eligibility.plist file, and click “Get Info”

Step 7: Check the box next to where it says “Locked”, and the lock will prevent your Mac from overriding the file if it detects that it is an external drive.

Step 8: Open Settings, enable Apple Intelligence from Settings, wait for you to be accepted into the waitlist— and enjoy!

IMPORTANT STEP, DO NOT SKIP:

Step 9: Follow Steps 1 through 4 to enter Terminal inside Recovery mode.

Step 10: Type in 'csrutil enable' to re-enable SIP.

If the Apple Intelligence option doesn’t show up, restart your Mac and try again.

Enjoy Apple Intelligence on your external drive!! You can now continue to use your Mac with your expanded storage without having to pay Apple for their exorbitantly priced storage! Thank me later, haha!

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