LM Studio

LM Studio — explained in more detail

LM Studio is a desktop app that pursues the same goal as Ollama — running LLMs locally — but takes the graphical-interface path rather than the command line.

Main components

Three areas define the app: a model browser that searches Hugging Face directly and downloads models with their quantisation; a chat interface for multi-turn conversation with prompt configuration; and a local API server that also mimics the OpenAI interface, which feeds tools like Continue.dev or custom scripts.

Comparison with Ollama

There is a lot of functional overlap — both use llama.cpp under the hood, both provide an API server. The difference is the operating concept: Ollama is CLI-centric and fits into scripts, LM Studio is GUI-centric and a better match for individual users without terminal experience.

Availability

LM Studio runs on macOS, Windows and Linux. The software is free to use but not open source — that sets it apart from Ollama, whose code lives publicly on GitHub.

More on this topic

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