Why is Apple Intelligence stuck on "Preparing" on my M1 MacBook?

I found a solution on reddit that worked for me!!!

Go into the Siri and AI setting panel.

Language was set to an invisible null option in a dropdown.

Clicking on it made it look like it was set to "English", but it wasn't. Also my "Voice" was locked on British-1 with no other options.

What you have to do is reset the Language to anything that isn't English(US). Trying to select English(US) will give you an error, and you'll have to back out and come back in. BUT then if you select say French(Canada), it will disable your Apple Intelligence Options. Then you can set the language back to English(US) which will bring back the Apple Intelligence dropdown. Now you'll be able to turn the Apple Intelligence switch on and it should just go. Once enabled you'll click through the startup boxes and then it's just fine. You'll even have the voice options back (multiples of American, Australian, British, Indian, Irish and South African).

Both my M3 MacBook Pro and my son's M1 MacBook Air were stuck on "Preparing" since the day 15.1 came out. Nothing worked. So last night I did full Time Machine backups of both machines, did a reset and then a restore, and voila. Suddenly Apple Intelligence was ready to turn on after maybe 5-10 minutes back in action.

It could have been much worse if Time Machine wasn't so brilliant. 45 minutes later and it was like nothing even happened even though I had nuked my computer lol

I reluctantly did the reset and restore from full Time Machine backup and it worked. First question to “smarter” Siri?

“Hey Siri, what took you so long?”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

🤣

Thanks for all the help here everyone.

I finally went to the nuclear option: I did a full Time Machine backup, factory reset and then restored from the back-up. And that did the trick. (2024 Mac Air M3.)

I did notice when I went to the Voice option under Apple Intelligence and Siri, that it used to be just a greyed out circle and after the reset, it looked like it was downloading something (the circle filled up in a clockwise direction.) So maybe the voices were not really downloaded before? Dunno.

FYI: Under General, Storage, macOS, I am still showing 4.43, yet new Siri is working.

But it works!!! Only took 3 and a half weeks!

After trying most of the suggestions on this thread I called Apple Care (I have a new Mini M4, running Mac OS 15.1.1). Agent directed me to Settings/Apple Intelligence & Siri/ Language; then select Arabic (or any other language) from pull-down list; message will indicate that AI is not available. Then go back to Language and select English (United States). Selection was accepted (whereas previous attempts were not) and AI was turned on.

i'm stuck on downloading and i cant access writing tools. it's already taking up over 5 GB of storage.

Where are you located?

Which version are you trying to download ?

Apple Intelligence is fully downloaded (storage reads 4.49 GB), but "preparing" persists under Settings/Apple Intelligence and Siri. I have a Mac Mini M4 with Mac OS 15.1.

[Edited by Moderator]

This worked for me also and was quick and painless.

I am also stuck at 4.91 on an M1 MacBook Pro and have been for weeks. This appears to be a thing...

Ah... I misread the moderator comment as deleted not edited so reposted (didn't see it here when I looked) oops. In any case. There's a solution now.