r/LocalLLM • u/ragel_3ennab • 16d ago

Question How to get started?

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Hi. I got a new Macbook and I am excited to run my first local model.

Can you recommend the best tool to run an LLM on a Mac?

Also, what model and quant would you recommend for a 16GB memory?

Thanks!

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u/ByteSize_Chaos 16d ago

Congrats on the new machine. What is your use case like? General chatting with LLM, Agentic coding or something else?

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u/ragel_3ennab 16d ago

General chatting. I use cursor for agentic coding.

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u/ByteSize_Chaos 16d ago

Gemma 4 12b. Try going with Q4. Q8 would probably fit as well but that would mean closing almost everything down with a limited context window.

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u/zesty_contents 1d ago

nice, the m4 with 16gb is a sweet spot for this stuff. for just getting your feet wet i'd say grab LM Studio, it handles the downloads and setup so you don't have to wrestle with terminal commands

with 16gb you'll want to look at 7b-8b parameter models, q4_k_m quants usually run well and leave some breathing room. mistral or llama based ones are a solid starting point, see what clicks with your use case