How to delete Chrome’s weights.bin file and disable Gemini Nano

Google Chrome’s “weights.bin” file has been gathering a lot of attention, particularly for its forced, inexplicable, and inescapable nature. This file is responsible for on-device Gemini Nano features and is actually good for your privacy, but users have been looking for ways to opt out of these features, delete the file, and stop it from being redownloaded.

Google makes it easy to disable this file and its associated features, but ironically, this setting isn’t available to all users. If you’re wondering how you can get rid of Chrome’s “weights.bin” file, here are the steps you need to follow!

How to disable Chrome’s on-device AI features: The easy way

Google says it began rolling out the ability for users to easily turn off and remove the model directly in Chrome settings in February. Once disabled, the Gemini Nano model will no longer download or update, so you won’t have a large “weights.bin” file hogging space on your computer anymore — with the caveat that features that rely on the deleted models will no longer work.

If you’re okay with the trade-off, here are the steps to follow:

1. Open the Chrome browser on your computer.
2. Navigate to Settings > System.
3. Disable “On-device AI.”

This will disable the feature and automatically delete the weights.bin file that Chrome downloads, as Reddit user Laicure shows us:

As simple as this toggle is, and despite Google’s claims, it’s actually not available to many users.

How to disable Chrome’s on-device AI features: The alternate way

If you don’t have the toggle in Chrome, you must first tell the browser to stop fetching the model, and then delete the files.

Step 1: Disable the Chrome Flags

• Open Google Chrome, type chrome://flags into your URL address bar, and press the Enter key on your keyboard.
• In the search bar at the top, search for “optimization-guide-on-device-model.”
• When the #optimization-guide-on-device-model flag appears, click the dropdown menu on the right and select “Disabled.”

• Search and disable “#prompt-api-for-gemini-nano” too.

• Click the Relaunch button that appears at the bottom of the screen to restart Chrome.

This stops Chrome from using the feature, preventing forced auto-downloads when you delete the files.

Step 2: Delete the Folder

Now that Chrome is blocked from retrieving the file, you can safely delete the bloated folder. Make sure Chrome is fully closed before doing this.

On Windows:

• Press Win + R.
• Paste %LOCALAPPDATA%GoogleChromeUser Data and hit the Enter key on your keyboard.

• Look through the “Default” folder (or your specific user profile folder) for the “OptGuideOnDeviceModel” folder.
• Delete it.

On macOS:

• Press Cmd + Shift + G.
• Paste ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/ and hit the Enter key on your keyboard.

• Search for the “OptGuideOnDeviceModel” folder and move it to the trash bin.

There’s a chance a future Chrome update will reset these flags and redownload the AI model. There are registry changes you can make to prevent this from happening, but that is outside the scope for most users. The easier, non-nuclear option would be to repeat these steps again, or hope that the toggle to easily disable the feature becomes available to you.