Stop Apple targeting ads on your Mac

Those uncannily relevant ads in the App Store, Apple News, and Stocks come from Apple's own ad platform, and one switch stops them being targeted at you. Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Apple Advertising and turn off Personalized Ads. The ad spaces stay, but Apple stops mining your activity to pick what fills them.

Where Apple's targeted ads show up

This is not about banner ads on random websites — it is Apple placing ads inside its own apps:

• App Store — sponsored results at the top of Search, and promoted apps on the Today and app-detail pages.
• Apple News — ads interleaved between stories in your feed and in Apple News+.
• Stocks — ads in the news section beneath your watchlist.

When "Personalized Ads" is on, Apple chooses which of these to show using signals tied to your Apple Account: the apps and content you download, what you read, your account details, and your approximate location. Switching it off cuts that link — you still see ads, but they are no longer selected from your behaviour.

Turn off the targeting

1. Open System Settings and click Privacy & Security.
2. Scroll down and click Apple Advertising.
3. Turn off Personalized Ads.

It applies at once and needs no restart. The location is the same across macOS Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia; on Monterey and earlier it sits under System Preferences → Security & Privacy → Privacy → Apple Advertising. Because targeting is tied to your Apple Account, repeat this on your iPhone and iPad (Settings → Privacy & Security → Apple Advertising) so the same account is not personalizing ads on those devices either.

The Terminal shortcut

# stop Apple targeting ads with your activity
defaults write com.apple.AdLib allowApplePersonalizedAdvertising -bool false

# undo: allow personalized targeting again
defaults write com.apple.AdLib allowApplePersonalizedAdvertising -bool true

There is nothing to relaunch afterwards. Reading the value back with defaults read com.apple.AdLib allowApplePersonalizedAdvertising returns 0 once targeting is off.

See what Apple has on you

The same Apple Advertising panel has a View Ad Information button showing the segments Apple has grouped you into. If you would rather cut Apple's data collection more broadly, pair this with turning off analytics and diagnostics so your Mac stops sharing usage data as well.