Local AI on a Mac: what one open source app runs on Apple Silicon, and what it does not

Locally Uncensored 3.0.6 is the first release with a Mac build. It is an open source desktop app (AGPL-3.0) that runs AI models on your own machine: chat, a coding agent, image and video generation, voice, and a model that can use your mouse and keyboard. On Windows and Linux it has 170,000+ downloads. On the Mac it is a beta, and the honest reason is short: the app has run on exactly one Mac so far.

This post goes through each part of the app and says what runs locally on a Mac today, what only runs on Windows and Linux, and what I have not tested.

What you need

Apple Silicon (Intel Macs are not supported)
macOS 14 or newer

The one Mac it has run on is an M5 Pro with 48 GB on macOS 26. It has not run on macOS 14 or 15, and not on a Mac with 16 or 24 GB. If you have one of those, your report is worth more to me than another run on my own machine.

Install

1. Download the .dmg for Apple Silicon from locallyuncensored.com/mac.
2. Open it and drag the app into Applications.
3. Start it. The setup wizard picks a first model for your machine.

The .dmg is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Local use is free and needs no account.

Local chat with an LLM

Local models run through a bundled server with Metal. There is no separate runner to install first. If you already use Ollama or LM Studio, the app can talk to those as backends too.

Around the chat itself: thinking is shown as it happens, you can chat with your own documents through a local index, keep a memory across conversations, switch personas, and compare two models side by side. Models with image input download together with their image part, the second file a local model needs to see pictures. That download path is new in 3.0.6 and I have not checked it on the Mac specifically.

There is also a Local API: an OpenAI compatible server on port 8129 that lists your local models under one address. It listens on localhost unless you allow the LAN, and it always asks for a token.

Local image generation without ComfyUI

On Windows and Linux the app drives ComfyUI. On a Mac it does not use ComfyUI at all. Create makes images on the Mac itself, on engines the app installs for itself.

The Mac catalog lists 23 image models. Each tile says how much memory the model needs, and that number is a hard limit, not a hint: a model that needs 32 GB stays locked on a 16 GB Mac. The smallest ones (SD Turbo, Realistic Vision V5.1) need 8 GB.

Measured on the M5 Pro with 48 GB:

DreamShaper XL Turbo    one image    33 s
Qwen-Image 2.1 Turbo    one image    38 s

A smaller Mac will be slower. I have not measured by how much.

One Mac detail the app handles for you: chat and Create share one pool of memory. Before a picture or video run, Create takes the chat model out of memory, shows "Freeing memory..." while it does, and brings the model back afterwards.

Local image editing

Edit on the Mac runs on Qwen-Image 2.1, and the Edit tab appears once that model is installed. The 4-bit pack needs 16 GB.

It works differently from the brush you may be used to. There is no mask. You give it a picture and describe the change in words, and you can add reference images.

Edit on the Mac is in the code and in the app. It is not in the list of things I timed for the release, so treat it as less proven than plain generation.

LoRAs on the Mac

You can use LoRAs with the quantized image models in the Mac catalog, the ones whose names end in 4-bit or 8-bit: Qwen-Image 2.1, Qwen-Image 2512, Z-Image Turbo and FLUX.2 klein 4B. There is a LoRA list with its own folder, a stack with strength sliders, and delete moves the file to the Trash.

A Qwen-Image 2.1 LoRA that carries its own alpha is weighted the way ComfyUI does it, alpha divided by rank. Before 3.0.6 it ran at the full strength that was set, which was too strong.

Character LoRA training: not locally on a Mac

This one I want to state flat, because people search for it. Training a character LoRA on your own hardware works in the app on Windows and Linux, where Character Studio trains on your own card and drops the result into your local LoRA folder. It does not run locally on a Mac. On a Mac, character training goes through the hosted side, and a character trained there can be downloaded as a .safetensors file.

Local video generation

The Mac catalog lists 31 video models. The smallest need 16 GB: LTX-2.3 Distilled 4-bit, and Wan 2.1 T2V 1.3B, which is better off with 32.

LTX-2.3 Distilled 4-bit    2 s clip, 768x512, with sound    64 s    (M5 Pro, 48 GB)

Two things to know before you start a long run. Where a model was timed on a real run, Create tells you before the start how long a clip will take once that is ten minutes or more, and during the run it shows the step and the time left. And most video models in the Mac catalog are marked "Experimental: not yet tested in LU". Take that label at its word.

Animate, which starts a clip from a picture, is there once you have installed a video model that takes a start image.

What Create does not do locally on a Mac

On Windows and Linux, Create also has local lanes for background removal, talking character, music, extending a clip and motion control. None of those run locally on the Mac build. Upscale and erase are hosted on every platform.

Voice mode

You talk, the chat model you picked answers, and you hear the answer. Speech recognition, the voice and the turn taking run on your machine. There are fifteen voices, and you can interrupt an answer by speaking.

Numbers from the M5 Pro:

Setup download          about 0.7 GB
Answer starts           1.4 to 2.0 s after the end of the question
Voice engine in memory  1.2 to 1.3 GB

Voice is in beta and English only. On the Mac it has been tried by hand in the app. It did not get the point by point check the Windows app got.

Local computer control

A model uses the mouse and keyboard in apps you approve. It is off by default. In every new chat it asks once before it looks at the screen, and it never types into a password field.

On a Mac it is more limited than on Windows, and it is not fully tested yet. The app says so at its switch. What is different:

• macOS has to grant two permissions first, Accessibility and Screen Recording.
• On Windows the model gets a list of the buttons and fields in a window. On macOS that list is not available, so the model needs image input and works from screenshots.
• For the same reason the app cannot name what a click would press, so every click is asked and needs your click.
• The autonomous mode exists on Windows only.

Control+Option+Space pauses and Control+Option+Esc stops. I would use this on a Mac to try it out, not to rely on it.

Coding agent

The Agent and Code tabs are in the Mac build. The agent's shell gets the PATH of your login shell, so tools installed through Homebrew are found. The agent can also call the local image and video engines as tools. I have no separate Mac test run for these two tabs to point at.

Not confirmed on macOS

Remote Access (using the app from your phone)
Automatic update (there is no older Mac version to update from)

Short version

Local chat, image generation, image editing by prompt, LoRAs, video and voice run on the Mac itself, with no ComfyUI and no account. Character LoRA training, music, talking character and the other extra lanes do not run locally on a Mac yet. Computer control is there but not fully tested. All of it has run on one M5 Pro with 48 GB, which is why the build says beta.

If something breaks on your machine, the issue tracker is the place. The code is at github.com/PurpleDoubleD/locally-uncensored, and the Mac page keeps the current state of each part.

If your Mac is an Intel model or short on memory, the same kind of models also run hosted in a browser as LU Cloud. That part is paid. Everything above is free.