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Life & fun · August 3, 2026

Run an 80B Qwen in 4.3 GB of RAM on a Mac, and a 35B on an iPhone

Swiftlet is a Swift and Metal runtime that runs large Qwen Mixture-of-Experts models locally on Apple devices by streaming expert weights from storage, enabling 35B and 80B models to run with low RAM, including on iPhone. - leonickson1/Swiftlet

Run an 80B Qwen in 4.3 GB of RAM on a Mac, and a 35B on an iPhone launched on August 3, 2026 with 312 votes, #74 of 23,274 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches.

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In plain words

This tool enables users to run large language models locally on resource-constrained devices. It allows an 80-billion-parameter Qwen model to operate on a Mac with only 4.3 GB of RAM, and a 35-billion-parameter version on an iPhone. The project is designed for developers and enthusiasts who want to use advanced AI models without relying on cloud services or high-end hardware, making large language models accessible on personal devices.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

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