Blocking Siri on macOS Sierra
Siri is a welcome addition to macOS Sierra, but in certain environments it’s a service which needs to be disabled. For those Mac admins who need to do this, here are the relevant keys:
Stop Siri from running:
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| <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> | |
| <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> | |
| <plist version="1.0"> | |
| <dict> | |
| <key>Assistant Enabled</key> | |
| <false/> | |
| </dict> | |
| </plist> |
Block Siri’s menubar icon:
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| <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> | |
| <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> | |
| <plist version="1.0"> | |
| <dict> | |
| <key>StatusMenuVisible</key> | |
| <false/> | |
| <key>UserHasDeclinedEnable</key> | |
| <true/> | |
| </dict> | |
| </plist> |
For those who want to disable Siri using management profiles, I’ve created .mobileconfig files and posted them here on Github:
https://github.com/rtrouton/profiles/tree/master/DisableSiri
Hat tip to Brad Vrooman for posting about the correct settings.
Der Flounder 
Hey Rich,
I checked the links you provided and didn’t see any documentation on where these plist typically live on 10.12. Are these user specific in ~/Library/Preferences/ or system specific in /Library/Preferences (or somewhere else)? Mainly asking for documentation’s sake.
Cheers!
These are profiles, so they can be applied at either the computer or user level. While I haven’t tested this myself, I’ve updated our first run script (which is based largely on Rich’s) to apply the above PLIST settings to the User Template folder. I imagine you could apply the PLISTs in either the /Library or ~/Library folder for users.
Why oh why is there a space in the XML key to prevent Siri from running???
If these plist files were placed in the user template folder, would it stop asking if Siri needs to be configured on first login?
This is exactly what I’m looking for but could someone provide a short set of instructions on how to use/apply the .plist files above or how to use the .mobileconfig method? Thanks!
yo how do i run this???????
Apparently one must take a coding course first, because I have no idea either!
You need to save these as files and place them in the directories indicated in my comment (see above), and logout/login the current user OR load them using the launchd binary. These are LaunchDaemons/LaunchAgents, so you can look up Apple’s documentation on how these work and see how to load them.