CereVault Serve
Local AI Made Easy
Only for Mac
Free
Mac
CereVault Serve lets you run private AI on your Mac.
Pick a model from a curated catalog and your Mac becomes a personal AI for your other devices. Your iPhone, iPad, and other Macs on the same Wi-Fi can chat through CereVault Serve over your local network. Nothing leaves your devices unless you ask it to.
Built on Apple's MLX framework, CereVault Serve runs open-weight language models entirely on your Mac. No accounts. No subscriptions. No data sent anywhere.
— KEY FEATURES —
• Curated model catalog. Pick from Llama 3.2, Gemma 3 and 4, Qwen3.5, and Phi 4 Mini with one click — including vision models that understand images. Each model downloads directly to your Mac.
• Bring your own model. Add any MLX model from Hugging Face; CereVault Serve checks it will run before downloading.
• Lightweight menu bar app. Lives quietly in your menu bar — no Dock icon, no windows in your way until you need them.
• Private by default. Models run entirely on your Mac. Network access is loopback-only until you explicitly turn on device sharing.
• Local network sharing. Turn on one toggle to let your iPhone, iPad, and other Macs on your Wi-Fi connect.
• OpenAI-compatible API. Chat, streaming, vision, tool calling, and optional embeddings. Works with any client that supports a custom base URL.
• Easy to find. While sharing is on, your Mac announces itself on your network (Bonjour) so compatible apps can discover it.
• Optional access code. Require a code before anyone on your network can connect.
• Browser chat. Anyone you share with can chat from a web page — conversations stay on their own device.
• Streaming responses. Token-by-token output for natural typing-style conversations.
• Storage you control. Manage downloaded models in one place. Free disk space anytime.
— PRIVACY —
CereVault Serve runs entirely on your Mac. No analytics. No telemetry. No accounts. No data is ever sent to the developer or any third party.
When you choose to download a model (or turn on the optional Embeddings feature), the files come directly from Hugging Face, a public model registry — that connection is between your Mac and Hugging Face only.
— REQUIREMENTS —
• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later)
• macOS 14 or later
• 1–6 GB free disk space per downloaded model
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
Bug fixes and reliability improvements:
• The server stays reachable when your Mac sleeps. While network sharing is on, CereVault Serve keeps your Mac awake (the display can still sleep) and restarts cleanly on wake. You can turn this off in Settings with "Keep Mac awake while sharing."
• Model downloads now retry and pick up where they left off after a dropped connection, instead of failing.
• Deleting a model in Manage Models now actually frees its disk space, and duplicate download files left by earlier versions are cleaned up.
• Gemma 4 4B (Vision) now loads correctly.
The developer, Brett Bakker, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Brett Bakker
- Size
- 13.2 MB
- Category
- Productivity
- Compatibility
Requires macOS 14.0 or later.
- Mac
Requires macOS 14.0 or later.
- Mac
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Brett Bakker