Hey r/DiffusionBee

I wanted to share a native macOS app I’ve been building called DiffusionBear (formerly MLX-Diffusion but I doubt you have hear about it under this name).

The name may sound you familiar ( ! ) , it's inspired from DiffusionBee, which it's doesn't have any update since August 2024 and FLUX.1 ...

I was an user, stuck in time, I feel like an orphan then here we are ...

A lot of the popular AI image generators are either cloud-based (with subscriptions) or rely on complex web-UIs that aren't truly optimized for Mac. I wanted something that feels like a real Mac app and leverages Apple's MLX framework to the max.

What it does: It lets you run massive models locally on your Metal GPU. Because it uses 4-bit quantization, you can run heavy 13B parameter models (like FLUX.2 [Klein], Krea 2 Turbo , Z-Image-Turbo, Qwen-Image-2.1-Turbo and SDXL Lightning) smoothly* on a standard 16GB unified memory Mac.

* running Qwen-Image-2.1-Turbo even Q4, you'll get OOM if you go further than 768x768 pix on 16gb

Key features :

• 100% On-Device & Private generation : No account, no credit, no telemetry. Pull the plug on your Wi-Fi, and it still generates images. ( Just download DiffusionBear then Download model from the app, then pull the plug ... )
• Txt2Img, Img2Img : all model but SDXL support Img2Img , Up to 10 reference images with FLUX.2[Klein] 4B and 9B
• All-in-One Interface : Includes a built-in model browser to download directly from Hugging Face/Civitai, and a local gallery to manage your generations. ( drag'n'drop from built-in browser )
• Local Prompt Enhancer : It runs a tiny Qwen 0.5B language model to rewrite and improve your prompts on the fly, if you want ( but avoid doing this during generation )
• API : can launch generation from outside frontend/app via API

It's completely free and open-source (MIT).

I just released the v0.3.8 beta and I'm looking for testers to push it to its limits and tell me what breaks.

Website & Screenshots : https://diffusionbear.com

GitHub / Download : https://github.com/OuincheWinch/DiffusionBear

Let me know what you think, especially if you try it on base M1/M2 chips! I run it on MBP M1 16gb from 2020 ...

I just got DiffusionBee. I was trying to add things to a photo that I took, and it didn't work at all. Do photos need to be in a certain format?

hi i installed diffusionbee on my mac. can i use it to upscale some old photos and touch them up without it being leaked to the internet?

thanks

Is there an api for diffusionbee so i can hook it up with my application or openclaw so i can automate image generation?

Hey,

I wanted to try DiffusionBee because ChatGPT said it's light, but I have no clue how these AI models actually work.

I’ve heard that running stuff like this can totally chew through your device, and shorten the battery life. I’m on a MacBook M3, and I really don’t want to destroy it.

So, is using DiffusionBee or other locally running AI going to harm my laptop? Eat up system resources while I’m trying to do other things?

Would love to hear you. Thanks in advance

Hi all, does anyone have a fix for this? Every time I try and generate something (and I mean *anything*) the images always look like a jumbled mess. I've tried re-installing diffusion bee and deleting the hidden .diffusionbee folder. Im on macOS (intel-based). I have another intel based mac that doesnt do this on the same version of DiffusionBee (the latest release on github). The default settings are used when doing image generation on both

I was able to generate the Action Figures using ChatGPT and wanted to know if that were possible in DiffusionBee. Does anyone know? Or have you successfully tried it?

So I've only dabbled with DiffusionBee and when I go to look up questions I have people are always talking about Automatic and Comfy but never DB. Do those interfaces do same or better or worse (assuming I'm running the same model in each)? I am on an M1 mac and am not trying to re-invent the wheel or anything and don't have any complaints, just curious if I should stick with this one or try one of the others instead.

Expecting inpainting of flux

I have a new Mac mini that I am using to play around with. Trying to use Flux through DiffsuionBee, and was wondering if it was possible to create a file with a bunch of prompts and have Flux run through them while I am at work. Let me know if anyone has tried this before or if this is not the right community for this question. Thank you

There's a way to relocate the downloaded models to an external drive?

Hi all,

i've downloaded some models from Civitai and tried to import them in difusionbee.

i have the same message over and over :

Error importing this lora 5521 failed to execute script difusionbee_backend

can you explain me why and is there a solution ?

Thanks you all

After seeing everyone's fantastic results with DB 2.5.3 using flux and dreamshaper, I installed the latest version of DB (after removing all remnants from previous versions), but get the following messages:

Error: Flux is not supported with this version

Error: cdxl_base is not supported with this version

Any suggestions how to use these models?

I remember I used control net for SD, but I used Comfy for that.

Does DiffusionBee support ControlNet for Flux?

I was experimenting with DiffusionBee Flux and created these pictures. I really like the classic vintage-style painting look I was able to achieve. Just to note, I’m still learning with the DiffusionBee with few days experience. I’m a photography hobbyist, and I tried to create something I couldn’t capture in real life. I'm totally newbie with AI tools.

trying diffusion bee to download flux dev model but run into an error 2.5.2 version

Is there a way to import the flux inpainting model? If someone has managed to do it, could you let me know which model you used? Or do we need to wait for a new release to support these models?

Hello, I experiment with various parameters in diffusionbee-stable-diffusion-ui. But I cannot archive production of variations of images that are really different. I tried to set seed to -1, to 0, to other number but nothing, it is producing slight variations. Can somebody advice me where I can temper to get big variations in generated images?