Local AI Apps and Tools for Mac

WhisperX is an open source speech-to-text tool for people transcribing interviews, meetings, and long recordings on their own computer. It builds on OpenAI's Whisper to produce transcripts with word-level timestamps and optional speaker labels.

Qwen Code is an Apache 2.0 licensed AI coding agent for developers who want help working through a codebase, changing code and checking the result. It runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, with a terminal interface and a desktop app. It builds on Google Gemini CLI and has developed into an agent that can use Qwen models alongside other model providers.

kotaemon is a self-hosted document chat app for people who want to ask questions across their files and check where the answers came from. It runs in a browser on Windows, macOS or Linux, with Docker also supported. The project uses the Apache 2.0 license.

llama-cpp-python brings llama.cpp model inference into Python applications and exposes it through a self-hosted OpenAI-compatible server. It's for developers building local AI applications or connecting existing API clients to models on their own hardware. The package is open source under the MIT license.

RamaLama runs and serves AI models on your own hardware using OCI containers. It's aimed at developers who want local chat or a self-hosted inference API with a container workflow they can also use in production. The project uses the MIT license.

KoboldCpp pairs local model inference with a browser interface built for chat, creative writing and roleplay. A fork of llama.cpp, it bundles KoboldAI Lite with tools for keeping character details and story context alongside your conversations. It's open source under AGPL-3.0.

aichat brings Ollama and cloud AI services into the same terminal interface for developers and people who work at the command line. It runs locally on macOS, Linux and Windows, with Android support through Termux. Model processing happens through the backend you choose: Ollama supports local models, while providers such as OpenAI, Claude and Gemini process requests in the cloud.

Aider is an Apache 2.0 open-source coding assistant for developers who work in a terminal and keep their projects in Git. It can help start a project or make changes to an existing codebase. You can use local LLMs or connect to cloud models from providers including Anthropic, DeepSeek and OpenAI.

Semantic Kernel is an MIT-licensed SDK for developers adding AI agents to their applications. It supports local models through Ollama, LMStudio and ONNX, alongside cloud services such as OpenAI and Azure OpenAI. You choose the model backend. The SDK runs on Windows, macOS and Linux and supports C#, Python and Java.

Typesense combines typo-tolerant site search with vector and semantic search in a self-hosted engine. It's for developers building searchable apps, product catalogs or AI search over their own data. The C++ engine uses an in-memory architecture for low-latency results as users type.

python-audio-separator separates recordings into vocals, instrumentals and individual instruments on your own hardware. It's an open-source Python package under the MIT license, aimed at karaoke creators and developers who want audio separation in scripts or their own applications.

Buzz transcribes and translates speech on your own computer using OpenAI's Whisper. It's for people who need transcripts or subtitles from recordings, plus live captions from a microphone. Local transcription works offline; the optional OpenAI Whisper API sends audio to a cloud service.

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.

Dyad turns a written idea into a working web app on your desktop. It's for people who want to build without starting from code, as well as developers who want to keep control of the result. The app requires no sign-up and runs on macOS and Windows. Your project files stay on your machine.

SillyTavern is a locally installed LLM frontend for AI hobbyists who want detailed control over character chats and prompts. It builds on TavernAI as an independently developed fork and brings text models, image generation and voice into one interface. It's open source under AGPL-3.0.

LivePortrait animates a still portrait using facial expressions and head movements from a driving video. It's for creators who want to animate faces or edit motion in portrait videos on their own hardware. It works with realistic photos as well as portraits in oil paintings, sculptures and 3D renders.

MLC LLM is an open-source compiler and deployment engine for developers who want to run language models on their own hardware or inside apps. Its main distinction is the range of devices it targets: the same underlying engine, MLCEngine, serves desktop, browser and mobile deployments. The project uses the Apache 2.0 license.

Chatbox is an AI chat client for people who want local models and cloud providers in the same app. It connects to Ollama for local LLM use and supports GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek with your own API keys. Chatbox also offers its own hosted model service.

mistral.rs is an open source inference engine for running models on your own computer or self-hosted server. It's for developers building AI applications and people who want local chat, multimodal models and agent tools in the same runtime. The Rust project uses the MIT license.

DocsGPT is an MIT-licensed, open-source platform for teams that want AI search, assistants and agents over their own documents. It can run on your servers with local models, including fully air-gapped deployments where documents and questions stay inside your network. Answers include the source title and page number so readers can check the evidence.

PDFMathTranslate translates scientific PDFs while keeping their page layout, formulas, charts, contents pages and annotations. It's for researchers, students and others who need to read papers in another language without losing the relationship between the text and its figures. It produces both translated PDFs and bilingual documents for comparison with the original.

pgvectorscale adds an index for large embedding datasets to PostgreSQL databases that use pgvector. It's for application developers and database administrators who want to keep AI similarity search in their existing database, with more control over search speed and storage use.

DiffusionBee is an open-source AI art app for Mac users who want to generate and edit images on their own computer. It runs Stable Diffusion offline, with image generation processed on the device. Model downloads require network access, and optional image uploads can send images externally. Its visual interface suits artists and designers who want local image tools without working through code.

Text Embeddings Inference is a self-hosted server for developers who need text embeddings for search and retrieval applications. It serves models through a REST API on your own hardware and can run offline once model weights are downloaded. The Rust project is open source under Apache 2.0.

Moondream is a vision model for developers building software that needs to understand images. It can answer questions about a picture, write captions, locate objects, identify points and segment regions. The open-weight models can run on your own hardware, including in an air-gapped environment. The repository code is licensed under Apache 2.0; check each model checkpoint’s own terms for use.

Roboflow Inference is a self-hosted computer vision server for teams building camera and image analysis systems. It runs on your own computer, server, or edge device and combines model predictions with workflows for tracking, counting, measuring, and responding to events. Roboflow also offers hosted servers and a Serverless Cloud API, where processing runs on its infrastructure.

ebook2audiobook turns non-DRM ebooks into narrated audio with chapters and metadata, for readers who want audio editions of their own books. It runs locally on Windows, macOS and Linux, with Docker support and a browser interface built with Gradio. It's open source under Apache 2.0.

Lemonade is an open source local AI server for people who want to use models on their own hardware or connect them to apps and agents. It handles chat, coding, image generation, speech, transcription, and embeddings. A built-in interface lets you use those capabilities directly, while its server makes them available to other software.

Letta is an open-source platform for AI agents that retain memory across conversations and use experience to improve over time. Formerly called MemGPT, it's for people building or using assistants that need continuity beyond a single chat. Agents can run locally or on a self-hosted server.

Local Deep Research is a self-hosted AI research assistant for people who need cited answers drawn from academic papers, the web and their own documents. It can produce a quick summary or pursue a complex question through repeated searches, then assemble a structured report. It's open source under MIT.

Label Studio is a self-hosted platform for teams preparing training data or evaluating AI outputs through human review. It handles text, images, audio, video and time series in the same application, including tasks that combine several data types. The open source edition uses the Apache 2.0 license and runs locally or on your own server, with Docker deployment and browser access. A separate hosted cloud edition runs on the provider's infrastructure.

Audiblez turns EPUB e-books into M4B audiobooks using Kokoro-82M text-to-speech on your own computer. It's for readers who want spoken versions of their books and control over the narrator, reading speed and sections included. The app is open source under the MIT license.

UI-TARS Desktop is an open-source AI agent that controls computer interfaces through natural language requests. It runs on Windows and macOS and supports browser use, with operators for both local and remote computers. It's for people who want an agent to carry out tasks in existing apps, such as changing a VS Code setting or checking an issue on GitHub.

Playwright MCP lets AI agents control a browser by reading structured page information rather than interpreting screenshots. It's for developers building browser automation, exploratory tests or agent workflows that need to keep a browser session open across repeated actions. The server runs locally on macOS, Windows and Linux, or as a self-hosted service.

OneTrainer is an open-source application for training diffusion models on your own machine, with dataset preparation and model previews in the same interface. It's for people adapting image or video models with their own training data. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux under the AGPL-3.0 license.

bitsandbytes is an open-source Python library for developers who need to fit large language model inference or fine-tuning into less memory on their own hardware. It works with PyTorch and carries the MIT license. Its focus is the memory cost of model weights and training, rather than a chat interface.