Disable Apple's ad personalization on Mac

If you are tightening your Mac's privacy, Apple's ad personalization is a quick, meaningful switch to flip. It is the signal that lets Apple's ad platform profile you from your account activity — and turning it off is a single toggle at System Settings → Privacy & Security → Apple Advertising → Personalized Ads. Here is how it works and where it sits among the other privacy switches worth throwing.

Turn off the personalization signal

1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security.
2. Scroll to the bottom and open Apple Advertising.
3. Turn off Personalized Ads.

Done — Apple no longer combines your activity into an interest profile for ad targeting. The switch behaves identically on macOS Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia, applies instantly, and carries no downside beyond less-relevant ads (which, if you are reading this, is the point). Prefer the keyboard? The same change is one line:

# disable Apple ad personalization
defaults write com.apple.AdLib allowApplePersonalizedAdvertising -bool false

# re-enable it
defaults write com.apple.AdLib allowApplePersonalizedAdvertising -bool true

Verify with defaults read com.apple.AdLib allowApplePersonalizedAdvertising — 0 means personalization is disabled.

What it does and does not cover

Be precise about the scope so you are not lulled into thinking one switch does everything:

• Covered: Apple's first-party ads in the App Store, News, and Stocks stop being tailored to you.
• Not covered: third-party web tracking, data brokers, and ads inside other companies' apps. Those are governed by their own controls — chiefly Safari's anti-tracking features.
• Not affected: whether you see ads at all. This is about profiling, not ad-blocking.

The next switches to flip

Disabling ad personalization pairs naturally with a couple of neighbours in the same Privacy & Security section. Turn off analytics and diagnostics sharing so your Mac stops sending usage data to Apple and app developers, and review Location Services to decide which apps still get your position. Together those three cut the bulk of what macOS shares by default.