An offline alternative to ChatGPT

Can ChatGPT work offline?

No. ChatGPT, its Mac app included, sends each question to OpenAI's servers and needs a connection. To use AI without internet, the model has to run on your own computer: that is what a local LLM is.

How Twoody works offline

When you set Twoody up, it downloads once a model sized for your Mac, 2.5 to 9 GB. From then on, conversations, documents and voice messages are handled on the Mac: turn Wi-Fi off and it keeps answering. Only web search, off by default, needs the internet.

Private, too

What never goes out cannot leak: your conversations and documents stay on your Mac, and Twoody sends no telemetry. The few things that do go out — the update check, the model downloads, web search if you turn it on — are listed, with how to check them.

Where it helps

• On a plane or a train.
• On a closed or monitored network.
• With confidential files: clients, patients, contracts.
• Wherever the connection is poor.

What to expect

A model that runs on a Mac is smaller than ChatGPT's: excellent for writing, summarizing and questions about your documents, less so for the hardest reasoning. Offline, it knows nothing that happened after its training.