LM Studio

LM Studio is a desktop app for running local LLMs with a graphical interface — a model browser, a chat window, and a one-click local server, all without the command line. It downloads GGUF models from Hugging Face, lets you pick the quantization visually, and shows whether a model will fit your memory before you load it. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, making it a natural fit for the Strix Halo and Apple boxes alike. Under the hood it uses llama.cpp, and MLX builds on Apple Silicon.

LM Studio is the friendliest entry point if you'd rather not touch a terminal — its 'will this fit' indicator is genuinely useful when sizing models against a box's allocatable memory.