Local AI on a Mac: apps whose AI runs on your machine, not in the cloud
Local AI means the model runs on your Mac’s own chip (the Neural Engine and GPU in Apple silicon) instead of on a company’s server. What you say, write or photograph never leaves the machine, and it keeps working without the internet. macOS already does some of this, such as Live Text and search in Photos; apps can go further, with dictation, translation and video search that run entirely on the Mac.
Why it matters where the model runs
With a cloud AI service, your words or images travel to the provider, are processed there and may be kept: in logs, for safety review, sometimes to train the next model. Each provider has its own rules, and they can change. With a local model there is no copy anywhere else, so there is nothing to keep, leak or hand over.
What you give up is size. The largest models only fit in a data centre. For focused jobs, though, such as recognising speech, translating, reading text in an image or understanding what is in a photo, a model that fits on a Mac is fast and accurate enough that you soon forget it’s there.
What macOS already runs on the device
- Live Text reads the text in photos and screenshots, in Preview, Photos and Safari.
- Photos recognises people, objects and scenes in your library, so you can search for “beach” or “dog”.
- Dictation runs on the device on some Macs and in some languages; check the note under Dictation in System Settings › Keyboard to see if yours is one of them.
- Translation stays on the Mac once you download the languages and turn on On-Device Mode in System Settings › General › Language & Region › Translation Languages.
- Apple Intelligence runs many of its features on the device; for larger requests Apple uses its Private Cloud Compute servers, which it says don’t keep your data.
There are gaps, though. Photos searches only its own library, not the folders and drives where many files actually live. Dictation goes to Apple’s servers in some languages. And nothing built in can find a moment inside a long video.
Local AI apps for everyday work
| App | What the local model does | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Volna | Recognises speech and types it into any app, in English, Spanish, Portuguese and nearly a hundred more languages; it copes with English terms mixed into another language | Free |
| Seekframe | Looks at every photo and every scene of your videos once, then finds the one you describe, in any folder or drive | Free for one folder; Pro is $19.99, one-time |
| Kalila | Translates selected text in any app with Apple’s on-device engine, with dictionary cards and pronunciation | Free |
| SimpleShot | Reads the text on a screenshot to find e-mail addresses, phone and card numbers to hide, and lets you copy text from any part of the screen | Free |
What about a chatbot that runs locally?
Open-weight language models can run on a Mac with Apple silicon through free apps built for the purpose. Smaller models are usable with 16 GB of memory; the more capable ones want 32 GB or more, and none of them matches the largest cloud models on hard questions. For dictation, translation and search, though, a specialised local model is already as good as a cloud service, and that is the kind of model our apps use.
Questions
Is local AI as good as cloud AI?
For focused tasks such as speech recognition, translation and image search, yes: close enough that you won’t notice in daily use. For open-ended questions, the largest cloud models are still stronger.
Does local AI work without the internet?
Yes, once the model is on your Mac. Most apps download it the first time you use them; after that you can turn off Wi-Fi and keep working.
Will running AI locally slow down my Mac or drain the battery?
On Apple silicon these models run on the Neural Engine, which is built for this work and draws little power. A big first job, like analysing a whole photo library, takes a while; Seekframe, for example, pauses when the Mac is warm or in Low Power Mode.
Is Apple Intelligence local?
Partly. Many features run on the device; larger requests go to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, which Apple says processes them without storing your data.