Local AI Apps for Mac and MacBook

Handy is a free, MIT-licensed speech-to-text app for people who want to dictate wherever they type on a computer. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. Transcription happens locally, so your voice stays on your machine and the app can work offline.

VoiceInk is a native macOS dictation app for people who want to write emails, notes, and AI prompts by speaking. It transcribes speech locally and works across applications, so writers, students, and developers can dictate into the apps they already use. Voice transcription works offline.

Jan gives people a ChatGPT-style chat interface for AI models running on their own computer. It's free and available for Windows, macOS and Linux. Local chats work offline, with the model and conversation kept on your machine. You can also use cloud models when you want access to a hosted provider.

Noema is a private local AI assistant for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro. It's for people who want to chat with models and work with their own files on Apple hardware without depending on a cloud service. Local chats can stay on your device, and file retrieval runs there too.

LM Studio is a desktop application for downloading and running language models on macOS, Windows and Linux. You can search for models, manage downloads and chat with them through the app. Downloaded models can run offline, including document chat that uses files on your computer.

Off Grid AI runs language models on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows and Linux. You can chat, analyze documents and generate images on your own hardware. The mobile app uses the MIT license, while the desktop app uses AGPL.

Whisper Notes is an offline transcription app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Silicon Macs. It's for people recording interviews, lectures or meetings who need the audio and transcripts to stay on their device. It requires no account and has no cloud sync, analytics or tracking.

Amical is a free, open-source AI dictation app that formats spoken text for the app you're using. It's for people who want voice input for email, chat, coding prompts and everyday writing, with a choice between local processing and cloud models. It runs on macOS and Windows, with mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Locally AI is a native app for running language and vision models on recent iPhones, iPads, and Macs. It's for people who want a private AI assistant on their own device, with text, image processing, and voice conversations available without cloud processing. Once a model is downloaded, it works offline and doesn't require an account.

RecurseChat is a paid Mac app for people who want to chat with AI and ask questions about their files on their own computer. It runs local LLMs without an internet connection or a server, keeping local conversations on the device. The same app also connects to Claude and ChatGPT, so you can choose local processing or a cloud provider.

Aiko is a paid, native transcription app for macOS, iOS and visionOS that processes speech on your device with OpenAI's Whisper model. It's for people turning meetings, lectures or other recordings into text while keeping the audio local, including sensitive recordings.

Linguist is a free browser translation extension for people who read across languages and want control over where their text goes. Its built-in Bergamot translator processes text on your device without an internet connection. You can also choose an external translation provider or connect a local backend such as Ollama or LibreTranslate.

Fullmoon is an open source chat app for people who want to run language models on their Apple devices and keep conversations local. It supports iOS, iPadOS, macOS and visionOS, with on-device inference optimized for Apple silicon. You can chat fully offline, and the app saves your chat history locally.

MacWhisper is a native macOS transcription app for people working with interviews, lectures, meetings and other recorded audio. It runs speech recognition on your own Mac, so local transcription keeps audio on your device. It also offers cloud transcription through services such as OpenAI, ElevenLabs and Deepgram, which send audio off your machine.

Enconvo is a native AI assistant and agent for Mac that can use your screen and selected text as context, then work inside your apps. It's for people who want help with writing, research and everyday tasks alongside the app they're using. A sidebar keeps the agent beside the current app, while text selection tools give quick access to editing and translation.

BoltAI is a native Mac app for people who want local LLMs and cloud AI services in the same workspace. It runs on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs and suits coding, writing, research and document analysis. The interface uses SwiftUI and AppKit.

Superwhisper is an AI dictation app for macOS, Windows, iOS and Android that turns speech into text in the app you're using. It's for people who prefer speaking to typing, including developers dictating requests to coding assistants. Speech recognition can run locally and offline, or use cloud models for remote processing.

Draw Things is an AI image generation app for iPhone, iPad and Mac that keeps generation on your device and works offline. It's for people who want to create and edit images without sending that work to a cloud service, including artists developing character concepts or trying out apparel designs.

GPT4All is a local AI chatbot for people who want to run language models on their own desktop or laptop and keep conversations on their machine. Its LocalDocs feature lets you ask questions about your own documents without sending them to a cloud service. It suits developers, teams and individuals who want control over their models and data.

TranslateLocally is an open source machine translation app for Windows, macOS and Linux. It's for people who want to translate text on their own device, including those handling material they don't want to send to a remote translation service. The desktop app has an MIT license and uses Marian and Bergamot translation models.

Liquid Apollo is an AI chat app for iPhone and iPad. Liquid LEAP runs smaller language models directly on your device, so local conversations do not depend on a cloud service. The app also runs on compatible Apple Silicon Macs.