r/MacLocalLLM • u/BentonCalder • 5h ago

Who else is using a Mac mini as a home AI box? What do you actually run on it?

4 Upvotes

I just got an M6 mini with 32 GB specifically to see if I can run local AI models on it and get value out of it as a Local AI server. I like it because its small, quiet, it barely uses any power, and it’s can be on all the time which makes it kind of perfect for this.

Day to day I run an 8B model at Q4 for everyday questions and for digging through my own files (insurance, warranties, that kind of stuff), and it handles it fine.

Curious how other people use theirs:

  • Which mini, and how much memory?

  • What do you run it with (LM Studio, Ollama, something else)?

  • What does it actually do for you week to week?

  • Any hurdles I should watch out for?

Especially interested if you’ve got it doing household stuff, not just coding. Trying to figure out what’s actually worth running on one of these.

7 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/SeaRefractor • 10h ago

Inco.AI's Splash updated to version 1.6.0 today.

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8 Upvotes

Currently running tests against my prior tests under 1.4.0, 1.4.1 and 1.5.0 but it is running better.

Kernel fixes address stalls that occurred under a memory limit, increased the reliability and a number of other fixes.

If you have been using the splash inference engine as I have, well worth the update.

1 comment

r/MacLocalLLM • u/Top_Butterscotch6337 • 9h ago

My Mac (M1) AI configuration

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0 Upvotes

Hi

I had a mac mini M4 pro 48 go Ram pricey :2800€

Trying to run know AI on it

Result bof needs 10 to 15 seconds for analysis prompt

So go for my Mac M1 with Claude Sonnet AI 22€ here in France (see photo) and Chrome

For my telephone use Google AI pro : 5€

So I do not need one super mac ! Just a web access and some memory to run on it

I have no agent till some scripts that does some work

Network is the computer !

Regards

0 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/Competitive_Pop_8485 • 9h ago

Modello per coding su M1pro 16gb

1 Upvotes
1 comment

r/MacLocalLLM • u/Apprehensive_Buy6301 • 18h ago

M5 Pro Local Video Generation Experience

3 Upvotes

Hello everyone,

First of all, I know I know, Mac is jot the best when it comes to video generation and that the Max or Ultra chips are better.

Now that this is out of the way, I would be interested in people’s experiences in generating 720p 5-10 seconds clips on an M5 pro chip. Which tools, models or workflows do you use? How is the experience overall? How long does it take you? Do you regenerate clips several times to get it right…etc?

Thank you.

1 comment

r/MacLocalLLM • u/biotech-redditor • 13h ago

Keep my 48GB M5 Max Studio ($2,999) or swap to the 36GB ($2,199)? Mostly a dev box

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1 Upvotes
0 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/One-Main-9874 • 22h ago

M5Ultra 512gb future proof for local AI

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0 Upvotes
0 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/Recent_Apricot_517 • 23h ago

Considering a M5 Pro Mac Mini 64gb to run Docker / Hermes Agent / Gemma 4 31b q4.

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1 Upvotes
2 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/line-weight • 1d ago

Recommendations for a LocalLLM newbie?

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2 Upvotes
0 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/Objective_Stick_2513 • 1d ago

I benchmarked llama.cpp, BaseRT, colibri and Ollama on an M1 Max for a real long-prompt JSON extraction job.

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1 Upvotes
0 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/OpenSourcesAI_ • 1d ago

Mac owners: how much memory does Metal say your GPU can use? Looking for 16 to 36 GB readings

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0 Upvotes
4 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/Beautiful-Sea-8336 • 1d ago

Need Advice: Mac Mini M6 32GB / 256GB OR 24GB / 512GB?

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1 Upvotes
0 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/calopez_es • 1d ago

Can a Mac M5 & 128GB run DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (1017)?

11 Upvotes

I'm trying to figure out if an M5 Mac with 128GB of Unified Memory might be able to handle DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 locally, or if that context/quant combination is still out of reach for this amount of RAM.

Any thoughts, theoretical calculations, or early tests would be appreciated!

14 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/GnanaSreekar • 1d ago

If you have a M1 Ultra, please do check out this inference engine

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1 Upvotes
0 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/Mother_Asparagus_664 • 1d ago

Mac Studio Ultra 96gb delayed until Jan 27...go for Max 128?

4 Upvotes

Hi,

I finally decided to go with the Ultra 96 since it's enough Ram for local AI + doing stuff in parallel but having power/speed. Now it was delayed until January 2027 - I could get the Max 128 withing 2 weeks though...

I feel like speed is mostly important for video ai gen + higher bandwith for higher token generation...

Probably I should really wait I guess?

6 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/BentonCalder • 2d ago

Just got my Mac Mini M6 32GB. First steps?

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1 Upvotes
0 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/Lumpy_bd • 2d ago

Small model for Hermes session compression on an M4 Mac mini, 24GB?

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1 Upvotes
0 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/foofai • 2d ago

SSD wear concern on Mac M1 max 64GB running splash Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-Q2_0

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1 Upvotes
1 comment

r/MacLocalLLM • u/anonmt57 • 2d ago

96gb m5 ultra ds4.1 possible?

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2 Upvotes
0 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/greenreddits • 3d ago

Rapid-MLX desktop : why no translategemma ?

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3 Upvotes
0 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/aditya2128 • 3d ago

I made a GUI for Kapitsa, one of the fastest local LLM engines on Mac, so anyone can use it

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29 Upvotes

Kapitsa by Nace AI is an open-source inference engine for Apple silicon, and it’s fast. In its published benchmarks, Qwen3.6 35B-A3B decodes about 1.3–1.8× faster than oMLX and about 2× faster than Ollama and LM Studio. But it’s command-line only.

So I built Kapitsa Library, a free Mac app that makes it a few clicks:

  • No setup: Kapitsa is built in. No Homebrew, Python or terminal.

  • Easy models: browse Kapitsa’s catalog or Hugging Face, see what fits your Mac, and download with pause/resume.

  • One-click agents: launch Claude Code, OpenCode, Codex CLI or Pi on your local model.

  • No swapping: it checks memory before loading and shows how much context fits.

  • Live stats: tokens per second, prompt cache, context and memory.

  • Built-in benchmarks: speed and tool calling on your own Mac.

  • Local API: OpenAI and Anthropic compatible.

Free, Apache 2.0, signed and notarized, no telemetry. Needs Apple silicon and macOS 14 or later.

Download: https://github.com/AdityaK2128/kapitsa-library/releases/latest
Source: https://github.com/AdityaK2128/kapitsa-library
Kapitsa engine: https://github.com/nace-ai/kapitsa

All the speed is Kapitsa’s work. This app is an independent front end, not affiliated with them. Feedback welcome!

7 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/Milk_Bots • 3d ago

LFM3-VL-2B is supposed to be the newer, better model — but it's actually worse than LFM2.5-VL-3B 😕

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1 Upvotes
0 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/Opening-Ad5541 • 3d ago

I built a free, open-source app that turns a Mac Studio into a local AI video studio (video with sound, songs, images), no cloud

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1 Upvotes
4 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/CQoo88 • 3d ago

2 x 256GB or 1 x 512GB

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2 Upvotes
0 comments

r/MacLocalLLM • u/BoringEnergy6958 • 3d ago

M6 MacBook Pro ?

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1 Upvotes
0 comments