Local AI Apps and Tools for Mac

OpenChatCut is a local-first AI video editor for creators who want conversational editing with control over the finished cut. AI changes become editable clips, captions, effects and audio tracks in the same project you can adjust manually. It's a free, open-source ChatCut alternative under AGPL-3.0, with a desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux.

Slotstream runs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next on Apple Silicon Macs that don't have enough RAM to hold the whole model. It's aimed at people with 16 to 64 GB of memory who want local chat, image questions or a model backend for coding agents. Most model weights stay on the SSD, while frequently used expert networks stay in memory. The full model remains available.

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.

PenEcho is an open-source workspace that puts handwritten notes, diagrams and AI-generated widgets on an infinite canvas. It runs on your computer as a macOS or Windows app, or through Node.js with a browser interface. It's for people who want to work through technical ideas visually and give AI feedback by drawing directly on the result.

Phone Harness connects an AI agent to a real iPhone or Android so it can use apps through their screens. It's for developers who want Claude Code, Codex, or another agent to carry out phone tasks without a dedicated app API. The software is open source under the MIT license, and it doesn't require a jailbreak or an app installed on the phone.

Pooled runs a single open model across browser tabs on laptops, desktops and phones, combining their memory when the model won't fit on one device. It's for people who want local AI chat or a coding assistant using hardware they already have. It's open source under the MIT license and requires no account or per-device installation.

Meetily is a local AI meeting assistant for people who want meeting notes while keeping recordings on their own device. It captures calls from Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and other meeting software without placing a bot in the meeting. You can watch the transcript appear during the call, then generate a summary.

ripwire helps AI coding agents find relevant code and assess changes without filling their context with whole files. It runs offline on your machine as a self-contained binary, with a CLI and an optional MCP server. It's for developers who want their agents to spend less context on repository research and check the effects of their edits.

Tel-Agent is a self-hosted AI receptionist for businesses that want phone calls and customer messages handled in one place. It runs on your own hardware and keeps recordings and searchable transcripts on your machine. It's free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 license.

deja-vu gives coding assistants a shared memory of work already recorded on your machine. It searches sessions from before you installed it, so developers can recover an old fix or carry context between Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor and opencode without starting a separate collection of notes.

Wan2GP brings video, image, music and speech generation to your own computer, with particular attention to GPUs with limited memory. It's for creators who want several media models in one browser interface. The project builds on Wan-Video/Wan2.1.

SurfSense is an open-source NotebookLM alternative that turns documents into cited answers and editable deliverables on your computer. It's a desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux, aimed at people working with confidential files, research or study material. You don't need an account.

agentacct is a local dashboard for developers who want to review what their coding agents did across projects and compare usage with recorded results. It brings task activity, file changes and test outcomes together with token counts and estimated costs. Claude Code and Codex have the fullest task records; it also supports OpenCode, Kimi Code and Hermes, with coverage varying by capability.

AIRI is a self-hosted AI companion for people who want a virtual character they can talk to and play games with. Inspired by Neuro-sama, it combines real-time voice conversation with game integrations for Minecraft and Factorio. The project is in early development; Factorio support is a work in progress with a proof of concept. It's open source under the MIT license.

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.

exo is a local LLM runner that combines your devices into a cluster, letting you use models too large for one machine's memory. It's for people who want to run large models on their own hardware and developers connecting existing AI clients to local inference. It runs on macOS and Linux under the Apache 2.0 license.

Sim is an AI agent workspace for teams that need to build automations and control how people use them across an organization. You can self-host it on your own server or cloud with Docker or Kubernetes. Its open-source code uses the Apache 2.0 license.

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.

OpenClaw is a self-hosted AI assistant that connects your own computer to the messaging services you already use. It's for people who want a personal assistant on their laptop, or teams that want to run a shared assistant on their own hardware. The project is open source under the MIT license.

AnythingLLM is an open source AI assistant for people who want to chat with their documents and use AI agents on their own hardware. The desktop app runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, while a Docker deployment supports multiple users on a self-hosted server. No account is required for the desktop app.

Langflow is a visual builder for developers creating AI agents and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications. You can run it locally or on your own server, with Docker support and desktop apps for Windows and macOS. The open-source software uses the MIT license. A hosted cloud offering provides a separate deployment option.

Ente Photos is a Google Photos alternative for people who want encrypted photo backups and AI search without giving a storage provider access to their library. You can use its hosted service or self-host the server. Face detection, grouping and natural-language search run on your device; the hosted service stores your encrypted backups.

vLLM is an open source engine for serving large language models on hardware you control. It suits developers and teams that need to handle many requests through an API while making efficient use of memory and compute. It's licensed under Apache 2.0 and can run with GPUs or on a CPU.

OpenCode is a free, MIT-licensed AI coding agent for developers working in a terminal, IDE, or desktop app. The desktop app runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, with support for both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. It can use local models, giving developers a way to run the model on their own hardware.

Diffusers is an open-source Python library for developers and researchers who want to run diffusion models on their own hardware or build generation features into an application. It uses PyTorch and supports image, video and audio generation. The library is licensed under Apache 2.0 and supports Apple Silicon.

LightRAG combines knowledge graphs with vector search to answer questions across a document collection. It's a self-hosted Python framework for developers building document assistants, particularly where answers depend on relationships between facts in different files, such as legal or financial material.

SD.Next is a self-hosted web interface for artists, researchers and people who want to generate and edit images or videos on their own hardware. It builds on Automatic1111 WebUI's original codebase and supports Stable Diffusion alongside other diffusion models. It's open source under Apache 2.0.

Crush is a terminal AI coding assistant for developers who want to work with their code and tools through a model they choose. The app runs on your machine, while model requests go to your selected local backend or cloud provider. It supports macOS, Linux, Windows (PowerShell and WSL), Android, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD.

RAGFlow is an Apache 2.0 licensed RAG engine for teams building AI agents that need to answer questions from their own documents. It can run on a self-hosted server through Docker on Windows, macOS or Linux. A separate hosted cloud service is available.

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.

FaceFusion is an AI face manipulation tool for photos and videos that processes media on your own machine. It's aimed at content creators, VFX artists, and film studios that want control over their footage and personal data. Local processing keeps that media on your hardware rather than sending it to a cloud service.

Cua gives AI agents access to computers they can inspect and operate, with tools for desktop automation, local virtual machines, and hosted fleets. It's for developers building agents that work across native apps and browsers, or evaluating how well those agents complete computer tasks. You bring the agent and model.

ComfyUI is a local visual AI workspace for artists and technical teams who want to control how images, video, audio, 3D models and text are made. Its node canvas shows each model and processing step, so users can build and adjust workflows without writing code. It runs on your hardware.

Codex CLI is an open source coding assistant that runs on your computer and works with local repositories. It's for developers who want to explore code, make changes, and use their existing development tools from the terminal. It runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux under the Apache 2.0 license.

Hermes Agent is a self-hosted AI agent from Nous Research for people who want an assistant that remembers past work and develops reusable skills. It creates skills after complex tasks, revises them through use, and searches earlier conversations to recover context across sessions. The project is open source under the MIT license.