DOALocal AI: how to run AI on your computer offline (2026)
Local AI means running artificial intelligence models on your own computer instead of on a company's servers. Once the model is downloaded, it works without internet and what you type stays on your machine.
Checked on 13 Oct 2026. Versions change every week: check the official site before installing.
What you can do with it
- Chat, write, summarise and translate.
- Get help with code, including autocomplete in your editor through the local API of Ollama or LM Studio.
- Ask questions about your own documents (LocalDocs in GPT4All, documents in Open WebUI).
- Generate images with ComfyUI.
Advantages and limits
Privacy, offline use (documented by LM Studio) and no subscription. In exchange, quality is below the top cloud models at complex reasoning, and speed and context depend on your computer. Local vs. cloud, compared.
What you need
What matters most is memory: the VRAM of your graphics card (NVIDIA/AMD) or the unified memory of a Mac. Without a GPU it runs on the CPU only, but slowly. Each model takes from a few GB to tens of GB of disk. Which local AI model to pick for your RAM: 8, 16, 24, 32 GB.
Where to start
The easiest options are LM Studio (an app with windows) and Ollama (one command). Guides: Windows · Mac · Linux.
Tools
| Tool | Operating systems | Licence and price | Ease of use | Current version |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ollama | Windows, macOS and Linux | MIT · free | Very easy | v0.40.3 (11 Oct 2026) |
| LM Studio | Windows (x64 with AVX2 or Arm64), macOS 14+ on Apple Silicon and Linux (AppImage and .deb) | Free · proprietary software (terms of use) | Very easy | 0.4.26 |
| Jan | Windows, macOS and Linux (.deb, AppImage and Arm64) | Apache 2.0 · free | Easy | v0.8.6 (9 Oct 2026) |
| GPT4All | Windows, macOS and Linux | MIT · free | Easy | v3.10.0 (25 Feb 2025) · low activity |
| llama.cpp | Windows, macOS and Linux | MIT · free | Technical | v0.6.0 (5 Oct 2026) |
| Open WebUI | Any system with Docker or Python | Open WebUI License (BSD-3 style with a branding clause) · free | Medium | v0.12.0 (10 Oct 2026) |
| ComfyUI | Windows, macOS and Linux (desktop app, portable build or manual install, per the README) | GPL-3.0 · free | Technical | v0.39.0 (5 Oct 2026) |
Keep reading
- Tools to run AI locally: Ollama, LM Studio, Jan and more
- How to install local AI on Windows, step by step
- How to install local AI on a Mac, step by step
- How to install local AI on Linux, step by step
- Which local AI model to pick for your RAM: 8, 16, 24, 32 GB
- Local AI on a Mac with Apple Silicon: guide and models
- Generate AI images locally with ComfyUI
- Local AI vs. cloud AI: privacy, cost and limits
- Local AI: frequently asked questions