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Comment by analog_daddy | Hacker News Reader

Hi. Could anyone share any recommendations (hopefully with actual links) for App Store apps to try running such local models? I’m not really interested in side-loading since it currently seems (to me) more of an hassle than it’s worth.

App Store search is broken in a sense that there might be so many apps claiming to be local but once you read reviews, it’s just another scam where it’s it’s usually sending your query to remote server.

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I'm the dev behind the Private LLM app, which was the first on-device LLM app on the App Store. Don't download it yet. I'm currently finalizing a brand new v2 rewrite which can run models that the copycat app (locally) cannot run, like Bonsai 2 27B, Gemma 4 12B etc.

https://x.com/private_llm/status/2101769928252473488

Thanks! All the best for your rewrite and definitely will check it out once it launches!

My current favorite is this one: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/locally-ai-by-lm-studio/id6741...

It's free, not annoying, and has a bunch of model options.

Non-app-store link: https://locallyai.app/

However this uses the GPU, not the Neural Engine like the submission.

Note that the model discussed in this article isn’t available in this app running on the phone. Still, it has some good local options like Gemma 4 and can link to the desktop LM Studio app which is cool.

Wow! This app is pretty cool!

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