What is ari?

ari is a lightweight macOS app that sits quietly in your menu bar and lets you ask an AI questions from anywhere on your Mac, with no browser tab required and no data sent to external servers. All AI processing happens on your device using MLX, Apple's machine learning framework designed for Apple Silicon chips. The app itself uses under 50 MB of memory. The language model it runs uses additional memory proportional to its size, but ari includes an idle timeout that automatically shuts the model server down when you are not using it and restarts it transparently when you open the panel again. Responses stream word by word in real time, and the panel renders Markdown and LaTeX formatting once generation completes. Model management is built into the app. From Settings you can download any compatible MLX model directly from Hugging Face, switch between downloaded models, and delete ones you no longer want. The README suggests starting with small 1-2 GB models for fast everyday queries or stepping up to a 5 GB model for better quality. Because all models run locally, nothing you type is transmitted anywhere. Installing ari requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later and Python 3.10 or later. Apple Silicon (M1 or later) is recommended for good performance. On first launch the app creates a self-contained Python environment in a hidden folder and installs the required dependencies automatically. This setup step takes a few minutes and only happens once. The app has no Dock icon and no persistent window. You click the menu bar icon to open the chat panel and press Escape to dismiss it. The icon itself can be customized from a set of system symbols. ari is open source and licensed under MIT.