Discoveries Apple Intelligence

Part of Discoveries.

"Model not ready" doesn't always mean downloading

SystemLanguageModel.default.availability in FoundationModels has only three reasons it can't run: deviceNotEligible, appleIntelligenceNotEnabled and modelNotReady. It reports modelNotReady both while the model downloads and when macOS will never download it, because a setting rules Apple Intelligence out. In the second case nothing is under /System/Library/AssetsV2/ for the language model, and waiting doesn't help.

macOS's eligibility check says which setting

Apple Intelligence's internal name is GREYMATTER. macOS decides whether a Mac may have it in libsystem_eligibility, which every process can call:

long domain = os_eligibility_domain_for_name("OS_ELIGIBILITY_DOMAIN_GREYMATTER");  // 122 on macOS 27
uint64_t answer, source;
xpc_object_t status, context;  // both come back retained
os_eligibility_get_domain_answer(domain, &answer, &source, &status, &context);

answer is 4 when the Mac is eligible and 2 when it isn't. status maps each input it checked to 3 if it passed and 2 if it failed:

Input	Fails when
DEVICE_CLASS, GENERATIVE_MODEL_SYSTEM	The Mac can't run it
EXTERNAL_BOOT_DRIVE	The Mac started up from an external drive
COUNTRY_LOCATION, COUNTRY_BILLING	It isn't offered in the country or region
DEVICE_REGION_CODE	The Mac's region in Language & Region
DEVICE_LANGUAGE	The Mac's language isn't supported
SIRI_LANGUAGE	Siri's language isn't supported
DEVICE_AND_SIRI_LANGUAGE_MATCH	Siri and the Mac use different languages

context holds the languages it compared: OS_ELIGIBILITY_CONTEXT_ELIGIBLE_SIRI_LANGUAGE and OS_ELIGIBILITY_CONTEXT_ELIGIBLE_DEVICE_LANGUAGES. The Mac's side isn't simply its first language. English (US) with the region set to Malta comes out as en-GB, so with Siri on English (US) the match fails and Apple Intelligence never downloads, while FoundationModels keeps saying it isn't ready.

A call takes well under a millisecond, so it's fine to make on hover. /private/var/db/os_eligibility/eligibility.plist holds the same answers for many domains, but it left GREYMATTER out on one Mac, so ask the function instead. Both functions are private and could change with any macOS update; Tidy Tabs falls back to a general message if they're missing.

Other ways in

GMAvailabilityWrapper in the private GenerativeModels framework has +isDeviceEligible, +currentWithUseCaseIdentifiers: and more, but only says whether, not why. Finding the domain number came from setting a breakpoint on os_eligibility_get_domain_answer while calling +isDeviceEligible.