Google Chrome’s hidden Gemini Nano model downloader (activated by default) downloads around 4 GiB of data to the file weights.bin at every update to run locally Gemini Nano. To avoid such behaviour, the following workaround steps should be taken:

Windows

Open the Chrome’s settings page chrome://flags/.

Here the local AI settings should be localised and switched to Disabled:

• Enable optimization guide on device
• Prompt API for Gemini Nano
• Prompt API for Gemini Nano for Multimodal Input
• Writer API for Gemini Nano
• Rewriter API for Gemini Nano
• Proofreader API for Gemini Nano

Now the model files themselves should be deleted:

del '~\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\OptGuideOnDeviceModel\*'

To prevent the new download of the weights.bin file, the stub should be created as a read-only object:

New-Item -Path '~\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\OptGuideOnDeviceModel\weights.bin'
Set-ItemProperty '~\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\OptGuideOnDeviceModel\weights.bin' -name IsReadOnly -value $true

MacOS

On MacOS the procedure is exactly the same with Chrome, but the file weights.bin is located in the following directory:

~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/OnDeviceHeadSuggestModel

Linux

On Linux, the file weights.bin should be located using the following command:

find ~ -name weights.bin -type f

Usually, it is the Chrome userspace config directory ~/.config/google-chrome.