Run AI chat, image gen, vision, and voice offline on your Mac
Your Mac can run AI that holds its own against cloud models for the everyday stuff: chatting, making images, reading documents, transcribing voice. The hardware got there a while ago. The software to actually use it locally mostly didn't, so I built Off Grid. Download a model and it all runs on your machine. Ask it something on a flight with no wifi. Summarize a confidential document that never leaves your laptop. Run a hundred image generations in a loop and pay nothing, because it's your own GPU doing the work. Swap your paid dictation app for local Whisper. Talk through a coding problem…
In plain words
Off Grid is software that runs AI models locally on Mac computers for chat, image generation, document analysis, and voice transcription without requiring internet connection or cloud services. It is designed for users who want to process sensitive information privately, avoid subscription costs, or work offline. The software includes a chat interface, supports custom model downloads, exposes an OpenAI-compatible API endpoint for developers, and leverages Mac GPU hardware to eliminate per-use token fees.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Your Mac can run AI that holds its own against cloud models for the everyday stuff: chatting, making images, reading documents, transcribing voice. The hardware got there a while ago. The software to actually use it locally mostly didn't, so I built Off Grid. Download a model and it all runs on your machine. Ask it something on a flight with no wifi. Summarize a confidential document that never leaves your laptop. Run a hundred image generations in a loop and pay nothing, because it's your own GPU doing the work. Swap your paid dictation app for local Whisper. Talk through a coding problem at 1am with no meter running. Developers: it exposes a local OpenAI-compatible endpoint at 127.0.0.1:7878/v1. Point Claude Code or any OpenAI client at it and run loops against local models at zero token cost. You can run it headless as just the gateway, or open the full studio with chat, RAG over your own docs, live artifacts, and MCP connectors. Under the hood it's llama.cpp for text, stable-diffusion.cpp for images (Metal, ships SDXL-Lightning and Z-Image-Turbo), Whisper for voice, Kokoro for speech. Encrypted local DB, LanceDB for vectors, Electron and React. Open core is AGPL. Signed macOS build on Releases, Windows coming. Inference and your data stay on the machine; once a model's downloaded the open core makes no network calls.
Does the same job
all alternatives →- OGOff Grid – Run AI text, image gen, vision offline on your phoneFeb 2026 · github.com · ▲124
Your phone has a GPU more powerful than most 2018 laptops. Right now it sits idle while you pay monthly subscriptions to run AI on someone else's server, sending your conversations, your photos, your voice to companies whose privacy policy you've never read. Off Grid is an open-source app that puts that hardware to work. Text generation, image generation, vision AI, voice transcription — all running on your phone, all offline, nothing ever uploaded. That means you can use AI on a flight with no wifi. In a country with internet censorship. In a hospital where cloud services are a compliance…
- IMI made an app to use local AI as daily driver2024 · recurse.chat · ▲637
Hi Hackers, Excited to share a macOS app I've been working on: https://recurse.chat/ for chatting with local AI. While it's amazing that you can run AI models locally quite easily these days (through llama.cpp / llamafile / ollama / llm CLI etc.), I missed feature complete chat interfaces. Tools like LMStudio are super powerful, but there's a learning curve to it. I'd like to hit a middleground of simplicity and customizability for advanced users. Here's what separates RecurseChat out from similar apps: - UX designed for you to use local AI as a daily driver.…
- OAOfflineLLM – a Vision Pro app running TinyLlama on device2024 · apps.apple.com · ▲126
Hey, I built this in a day while at Founders Inc Apple Vision Pro residency. Try it out, let me know what you think.
More ai this month
the category →
I trained a 125M-parameter transformer to autocomplete piano performances in real time (~108 notes/sec on an iPhone 15). The idea is basically GitHub Copilot or Tabnine, except instead of prompting it with code, you prompt it by playing a few notes on a MIDI piano. The model then continues what you played, entirely on-device. The app is free if anyone wants to try it. Happy to answer questions about the model, training, Core ML, or the many things that didn't work.
AI · 17d ago · simedw.com
Astute▲585Automate your B2B brand going viral, with new media creators
AI · 18d ago · company-app.joinastute.com
Hey HN, Henry from Cactus here! We previously released Cactus Needle, a 14MB agentic LLM for tool call, device use, and structured extraction for phones, wearables, smart homes, small robots and microcontrollers. We got really great feedback here, and have now incorporated the suggestions to release Needle 2. The whole model is a single 14MB binary that runs a full session in 28MB of RAM; 45m parameters at 2bit compression. Needle hits 500 tokens/sec decode speed on a Raspberry Pi 5, sits between 400-1,500 tokens/sec on VR devices like Meta Quest 3S and Apple Vision Pro, and ranges…
AI · 27d ago · cactuscompute.com
Launched alongside, June 2026
the whole month →
Fundraisly▲1,544AI fundraising agent that finds investors and books meetings
AI · Jun 2026 · fundraisly.com
- H6Homebrew 6.0.0▲1,481
Today, I’m proud to announce Homebrew 6.0.0. The most significant changes since 5.1.0 are a new tap trust security mechanism, the new faster, smaller, default internal Homebrew JSON API, sandboxing on Linux, better defaults informed by our user survey, many brew bundle improvements, improved performance and initial support for macOS 27 (Golden Gate). Happy to discuss any questions here!
Dev tools · Jun 2026 · brew.sh
- PU
hope you enjoy
Life & fun · Jun 2026 · vorpus.github.io
- IM
Life & fun · Jun 2026 · hackernewstrends.com