How to Run a Local AI Server for Your Whole Team on Your Mac in 2026 (Ollama Alternative, No Cloud)
You have one Mac with plenty of memory and a team that wants to use local AI. Buying everyone a big machine is expensive, and sending your code and documents to a cloud API is the thing you were trying to avoid. Off Grid AI Desktop can turn that one Mac into a shared AI server. Its gateway has a Team mode that answers several people at once, gives each person their own API key, and keeps the Mac…
Running a local AI server for a team on a single Mac in 2026 is now possible thanks to Off Grid AI Desktop, an alternative to Ollama that doesn't require cloud services. This app transforms a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later) and macOS 13 or later into a shared AI server.
To set it up, download Off Grid AI Desktop for Mac and install it. The app supports Qwen 3.5 9B or other chat models you've downloaded within it. The team must be on the same network as the Mac.
Once installed, open the Gateway in the sidebar of the app. Here, you can configure the server for multiple users simultaneously. The gateway has a base URL, http://127.0.0.1:7878/v1, which other computers can use by replacing the IP address with their own network address.
Next, enable Team mode, which allows several clients to use the server at once. Requests are queued and served in the order they arrive. If the server is busy, new requests wait in line. Each person or tool connected to the server should have their own API key for security. Generate and copy these keys within the app, and share them with the relevant users.
The server uses the OpenAI API, so most existing tools can interact with it by setting the base URL to http://your-Mac-IP:7878/v1 and providing the copied API keys. A Python example for connecting to the server is provided.
Finally, the app allows monitoring of server activity, including the number of active, waiting, and refused requests. This can be useful for monitoring server usage and troubleshooting. The gateway keeps the Mac awake while processing requests, but returns a 429 response if all slots are busy, instructing clients to retry after a short delay.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
