How to enable Apple Intelligence on an External Drive. (Without SIP Disable)

SIP Disabling is now a requirement on newer versions of macOS. This is an old version of the blog post that only works on macOS 15.1. If you are on a newer version, such as macOS 26 Tahoe, please refer to this guide: https://www.itecheverything.com/post/how-to-enable-apple-intelligence-on-an-external-drive-macos-tahoe-and-newer

If you’ve tried enabling Apple Intelligence on a supported Mac on macOS 15.1, 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, and we’ll do it without disabling SIP.

Let's get started.

Step 1: Open Finder, and Click ⌘ + Shift + G

Step 2: 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 3: Download the corrected version of the eligibility file from here: https://gist.github.com/OmChachad/16ec3b010fac0dba1396548fb162b747

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!

If the Apple Intelligence option doesn’t show up, restart your Mac and try again. Or if you’re unable to modify the eligibility.plist file, then you might have to temporarily disable SIP, for which you can follow this tutorial— but it likely won’t come to that.

Anyways, 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!

If this helped you out, PLEASE consider buying me a coffee— it really goes a long way in supporting my blog and my Siri Shortcuts and app development journey, while keeping everything free for all users.

PS: It’s been about 2 weeks since I last posted. I’ve been a little swamped up with work, school and college applications— but I’ve been continuing to build cool stuff and can’t wait to share that with you. Thanks so much for reading!