apfel icon
apfel icon

apfel

Access Apple’s local foundation model through a command-line tool with an OpenAI-compatible HTTP server, full function and schema calling, UNIX-friendly features, file attachments, JSON output, privacy-preserving on-device inference, and zero recurring costs.

apfel screenshot 1

Cost / License

  • Free
  • Open Source (MIT)

Application type

Platforms

  • Mac  macOS 26 (Tahoe) or newer. Requires Apple Silicon (M1 or later).
  • Homebrew
apfel screenshot 1
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Features

Properties

  1.  Lightweight
  2.  Privacy focused
  3.  AI-Powered

Features

  1.  No registration required
  2.  Works Offline
  3.  No Tracking
  4.  Command line interface
  5.  Ad-free
  6.  AI Chatbot
  7.  Apple Silicon support
  8.  Local AI
  9.  OpenAI Integration
  10.  Zero configuration
  11.  HTTP server
  12.  Model Context Protocol (MCP) Support

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apfel information

AlternativeTo Categories

AI Tools & Services, Network & Admin, OS & Utilities, System & Hardware

GitHub repository

  •  6,421 Stars
  •  246 Forks
  •  19 Open Issues
  •   Updated  
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What is apfel?

Use the free local Apple Intelligence LLM on your Mac — your model, your machine, your way.

No API keys. No cloud. No subscriptions. No per-token billing. The AI is already on your computer — apfel lets you use it.

What is this?

Every Mac with Apple Silicon has a built-in LLM — Apple's on-device foundation model, shipped as part of Apple Intelligence. Apple provides the FoundationModels framework (macOS 26+) to access it, but only exposes it through Siri and system features. apfel wraps it in a CLI and an HTTP server — so you can actually use it. All inference runs on-device, no network calls.

  • UNIX tool — echo “summarize this” | apfel - pipe-friendly, file attachments, JSON output, exit codes
  • OpenAI-compatible server — apfel --serve — drop-in replacement at localhost:11434, works with any OpenAI SDK
  • Tool calling — function calling with schema conversion, full round-trip support
  • Zero cost — no API keys, no cloud, no subscriptions, 4096-token context window