Mac Guides
14 InsiderLLM guides in Mac — practical, tested walkthroughs for running AI locally, sorted by most recently updated.
- Mac Mini M4 for Local AI: Which Config to Buy and What It Actually Runs Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB runs Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B silently at 40W. Which config to buy after Apple's 2026 price hikes, and what each tier actually runs for local AI.
- CPU-Only LLMs 2026: Real tok/s, Best Models & a 70B Dual-Xeon Build No GPU? A decent CPU runs 7B models at 10-15 tok/s, and BitNet hits 45 tok/s in 0.4GB. Real benchmarks, best models, and a $1,100 dual-Xeon 70B build.
- Stable Diffusion on Mac: Image Generation with MLX and Draw Things Draw Things generates SD 1.5 images in 8-15 seconds on an M2 Pro. ComfyUI takes 3x longer. MLX is fastest but code-only. Complete Mac image gen guide with speed tests.
- Mac Studio for Local AI: Is It Worth the Price? Mac Studio M4 Max (64GB) and M3 Ultra (96GB) for local LLMs after Apple's 2026 memory cuts. Real tok/s, cost vs dual RTX 3090, and who should buy one.
- Run LLMs on Mac M-Series: Faster, Without the Gotchas (2026) Foundational how-to for Apple Silicon local AI: unified memory, MLX vs Ollama vs llama.cpp Metal, verification, and the headless Mac Mini AI server.
- Best Local LLMs for Mac in 2026 — M1 through M5 Tested Best model for every Mac tier, 8GB to the 96GB Studio ceiling. Qwen 3.6, Llama 4 Scout, DeepSeek V4, MLX vs Ollama. Why bandwidth, not RAM, sets your speed.
- Best Apple M5 Pro and Max for Local AI (2026) M5 Pro at 307GB/s, M5 Max at 614GB/s (or 460 on the 32-core bin), up to 128GB — now the highest-memory Mac you can buy. Picks for Qwen 3.6 and Llama 3.3 70B.
- Ollama on Mac: Setup and Optimization Guide (2026) Install Ollama on Apple Silicon, verify Metal GPU is active, and tune it for your Mac's RAM. Config for M1 through M4 Ultra with model picks per memory tier.
- Best Way to Run Qwen 3.5 on Mac: MLX vs Ollama Speed Test MLX runs Qwen 3.5 up to 2x faster than Ollama on Apple Silicon. Head-to-head benchmarks on M1 through M4, with setup instructions for both.
- OpenClaw on Mac: Setup, Optimization, and What Actually Works brew install openclaw-cli, connect Ollama, configure the gateway, and stop fighting macOS. Apple Silicon setup, memory math, launchd config, and the gotchas nobody warns you about.
- What Can You Run on 8GB Apple Silicon? Local AI on a Budget Mac Llama 3.2 3B runs at 30 tok/s. Phi-4 Mini fits with room to spare. 7B models technically load but swap to disk. Honest benchmarks and real limits for 8GB M1/M2/M3/M4 Macs.
- Ollama on Mac Not Working? Fix Metal, Memory Pressure, and Slow Performance ollama ps says CPU? Generation crawling at 2 tok/s? macOS killed your model mid-sentence? Every Mac-specific Ollama problem diagnosed and fixed with exact commands.
- LM Studio vs Ollama on Mac: Which Should You Use? LM Studio's MLX backend is 20-30% faster and uses half the memory. Ollama is lighter, always-on, and better for APIs. Mac-specific benchmarks and when to use each.
- Fine-Tuning on Mac: LoRA & QLoRA with MLX Fine-tune Llama, Qwen, and Mistral on Apple Silicon using mlx-lm. Real memory numbers, step-by-step commands, and how to deploy your model with Ollama.