The same M-series chip that edits your video also runs language models, draws images, and transcribes speech, all on a single shared pool of memory. Most people rent three separate subscriptions to do those things on someone else's servers while that hardware sits idle. Off Grid AI Desktop is a free, open-source app that runs chat, image generation, and voice directly on your Mac.
Free, open source, runs offline. No account.
What You Need
This is the broad tour: chat, images, and voice. Image generation is the heaviest part, so size your Mac for that.
| Tier | Chip | RAM | macOS | Free disk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | M1 / M2 | 8 GB | 13 Ventura | 20 GB |
| Recommended | M2 Pro / M3 | 16 GB | 14 Sonoma+ | 40 GB |
| Comfortable | M3 Max / M4 | 32 GB+ | 14+ | 60 GB+ |
Chat and voice run fine on 8 GB. Image models want more headroom, so 16 GB is the comfortable floor if you generate pictures often.
What Off Grid AI Desktop Can Do
One app covers the three things you would otherwise pay three services for. Everything below runs on your own silicon.
Chat with a local model
A ChatGPT-style window backed by a model on your drive. Temperature and context controls are right there. The model's HTML, SVG, Mermaid, and React output renders live in a sandboxed preview.
Generate images on-device
Built on stable-diffusion.cpp. Run SDXL, the fast few-step SDXL-Lightning, SD 1.5 and 2.1, or the 2026 flagship Z-Image-Turbo at around 8 steps. You get text-to-image and image-to-image, a live per-step preview, progress and ETA, a cancel button, a lightbox, an artifacts gallery, and style presets like Sketch, Cinematic, and Anime.
Talk to it, hands free
Voice in uses bundled whisper.cpp: tap the mic and your speech becomes text in the composer. Voice out uses Kokoro-82M, an open-weight multilingual model, for a per-message Speak button and an auto-speak mode that reads replies aloud.
None of this calls home. You can draft a prompt, paint an image, and have the answer read to you on a flight with the Wi-Fi off.
How It Works
Three engines run side by side on Apple Silicon. llama.cpp handles chat, stable-diffusion.cpp handles images, and whisper.cpp handles speech. Kokoro produces the spoken voice.
Each one runs through Metal, Apple's GPU framework. Because the chip uses unified memory, the GPU reads model weights from the same RAM the CPU uses, with no copy across a PCIe bus. That is why a fanless laptop can chat, draw, and listen without a separate graphics card. The models are quantized so they fit in consumer RAM and stay fast.
Getting the Most Out of It
A few habits keep all three engines responsive.
- Match the model to your RAM. A small chat model plus an image model can both live in memory on 16 GB. On 8 GB, run one heavy task at a time.
- Use SDXL-Lightning or Z-Image-Turbo for speed. Few-step image models finish in a fraction of the steps a full SDXL run needs.
- Lower image resolution to iterate. Generate small while you tune the prompt, then render the final at full size.
- Quit memory-heavy apps. Image generation and a 7B chat model both want unified memory. Give them room.
Privacy: No Cloud, No Account
Cloud AI services send your words, your images, and your voice to a remote server, where they are logged and may train the next model. With Off Grid AI Desktop, all of it stays on your Mac. The prompt, the picture, the recording: none of it leaves the machine.
No account. No telemetry. No API key. The app is AGPL-3.0, so the full source is on GitHub for you to read. There is nothing to log in to and nothing phoning home.
Getting Started
- Open the repo at github.com/off-grid-ai/desktop and download the latest macOS build, or clone and build it yourself.
- Install and launch the app.
- Download a chat model and an image model from the in-app browser.
- Send a chat prompt, generate one image, and tap the mic to dictate one message.
- Turn off Wi-Fi and do all three again, to prove it runs on your Mac alone.
git clone https://github.com/off-grid-ai/desktop
cd desktop
npm install
npm run dev
What's Coming
- More bundled image and chat models with one-click presets.
- Cross-device sync so your chats, images, and models follow you, still local-first.
- Unified search across everything you have made on-device.
FAQ
Q: Is it actually free?
Yes. Free and open source under AGPL-3.0. Chat, image generation, and voice are all in the free open core.
Q: Does the image generation really run on my Mac?
Yes. It uses stable-diffusion.cpp through Metal on your GPU. The image never touches a server.
Q: Does it work offline?
Yes. After the models download, chat, images, and voice all run with no network.
Q: Which image models can I use?
SDXL, SDXL-Lightning, SD 1.5 and 2.1, and Z-Image-Turbo, with text-to-image and image-to-image.
Q: How much RAM do I need?
8 GB handles chat and voice. 16 GB is comfortable once you add image generation.
Q: Is my voice data private?
Yes. Speech is transcribed on-device by whisper. The audio and the text stay on your Mac.
Chat, draw, and talk to AI on your own Mac today, with nothing leaving your drive.
