8 ms·
Ensu – Ente’s Local LLM app
- lone-cloud 6mo agoAny half capable engineer can vibe code this in a week. Who cares?
- H8crilA 6mo agoSomeone still has to.
- alterom 6mo ago>Any half capable engineer can vibe code this in a week. Who cares? The people who got tired of waiting for "any half capable engineer" to do so.
- lone-cloud 6mo agoIt's not that hard to implement. I did: https://github.com/lone-cloud/gerbil https://github.com/lone-cloud/gerbil
- alterom 6mo agoNo you didn't. >A desktop app for running Large Language Models locally >desktop app Make it an Android and iOS app, get it published in the respective stores, add cross-device sync, and then you'll have a comparable proposition. That is, when I will be able to tell my friends to look up that Gerbil app and use that on their phone instead of ChatGPT when there's no service.
- jimbokun 6mo agoWhy didn’t you?
- lone-cloud 6mo agoI did: https://github.com/lone-cloud/gerbil https://github.com/lone-cloud/gerbil
- aimemobe 6mo ago[flagged]
- moqster 6mo agoHeard the first time about them (ente) yesterday in a discussion about "which 2FA are u using?". Directly switched to https://ente.com/auth/ https://ente.com/auth/ on Android and Linux Desktop and very happy with it. Going to give this a try...
- _factor 6mo agoYou presumably had a working 2fa app already, but off the cuff decide to switch to new unvetted variant X; basically unknown auth system after reading a few paragraphs of text in an afternoon? Does this seem sound?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- ahofmann 6mo agoWhile I would have the same reaction, in this case I think it is a sane decision. Ente is cornering the privacy market and I think they're doing a great job. They have a lot to lose (trust) and it would be stupid if they did something shady with the data entered in the 2FA app.
- stonogo 6mo ago> cornering the privacy market this seems self-contradictory
- ahofmann 6mo agoSorry, English is not my first language and I tried to look clever.
- PurpleRamen 6mo agoNot knowing them, how could OP trust them instantly? Whether they really have that trust or not, you have to know them for a while and from many different trustable sources. The story is a bit strange.
- VladVladikoff 6mo agoMaybe I’m missing it but the page is really light on technical information. Is this a quantized / distilled model of a larger LLM? Which one? How many parameters? What quantization? What T/s can I expect? What are the VRAM requirements? Etc etc
- hellcow 6mo agoI tried it on my iPhone 13 mini. I believe the model you get changes depending on your phone specs. For me it downloaded a ~1.3GB model which can speak in complete sentences but can’t do much beyond that. Can’t blame them though—that model is tiny, and my device wasn’t designed for this.
- NitpickLawyer 6mo agoYou can see what it uses here - https://github.com/ente-io/ente/blob/main/web/apps/ensu/src/services/llm/provider.ts https://github.com/ente-io/ente/blob/main/web/apps/ensu/src/... Either LFM2.5-1.6B-4bit or Qwen3.5-2B-8bit or Qwen3.5-4B-4bit
- embedding-shape 6mo agoHuh, 1.6B/2B/4B models, I guess they weren't joking when they said "not as powerful as ChatGPT or Claude Code". Also unsure why they said "Claude Code", it's not an CLI agent AFAIK?
- Mashimo 6mo ago> Also unsure why they said "Claude Code", it's not an CLI agent AFAIK? Claude Code is a Desktop app as well.
- yomismoaqui 6mo agoThe consfusing way AI companies like to name products is something to be studied.
- juliushuijnk 6mo agoI'm working on a rather simple idea; a Wordpress plugin that allows you to use a local LLM inside your wordpress CMS. It requires a Firefox add-on to act as a bridge: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ai-s-that-helpalot/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ai-s-that-hel... There is honestly not much to test just yet, but feel free to check it out here, provide feedback on the idea: https://codeberg.org/Helpalot/ais-that-helpalot https://codeberg.org/Helpalot/ais-that-helpalot The essence works, I was able to let it make a simple summary on CMS content. So next is making it do something useful, and making it clear how other plugins could use it.
- HelloUsername 6mo agoSpam? Ad? Also: "Your AI agent can now create, edit, and manage content on WordPress.com" https://wordpress.com/blog/2026/03/20/ai-agent-manage-content/ https://wordpress.com/blog/2026/03/20/ai-agent-manage-conten...
- juliushuijnk 6mo agoSpam for what? This is hackernews, I'm "hacking something" to push more control to users. I'm talking about connecting Ollama to your wordpress. Not via MCP or something that's complicated for a relatively normal user. But thanks for the link.
- juliushuijnk 6mo agoIt seems your link about the Wordpress variation validated my idea :). If the new Wordpress feature would allow for connecting to Ollama, then there is no need anymore for my plugin. But I don't see that in the current documentation. So for now, I see my solution being superior for anyone who doesn't have a paid subscription, but has a decent laptop, that would like to use an LLM 'for free' (apart from power usage) with 100% privacy on their website.
- bilekas 6mo ago> use a local LLM inside your wordpress CMS For when wordpress doesn't have enough exploits and bugs as it is. Also why bother with wordpress in the first place if you're already having an LLM spit out content for you ?
- chocks 6mo agoThis looks amazing! As I learn and experiment more with local LLMs, I'm becoming more of a fan of local/offline LLMs. I believe there's a huge gap between local LLM based apps and commercial models like Claude/ChatGPT. Excited to see more apps leveraging local LLMs.
- netfl0 6mo agoWeird hype going on here in comments.
- kylehotchkiss 6mo agoAlso weird arrogance. Yeah, somebody else could have vibe coded it in a week. But they didn't, so they don't get the 100 HN klout points for it. Helping non-technical people get off of ChatGPT.com and using increasingly better local models seems worth celebrating and continued iteration.
- alterom 6mo ago>Also weird arrogance It's part for the course, yet I'm still surprised. My favorite so far is a commenter proudly touting their own run-LLM-locally app to prove that they "did it already". An app which is desktop only. I am at loss when it comes to arguing with people like that.
- nathan_compton 6mo agoPlease god stop letting LLMs write your copy. My brain just slides right over this slop. Perhaps you have a useful product but christ almighty I cannot countenance this boring machine generated text.
- franze 6mo agoif you are into local LLMs check out apfel https://github.com/Arthur-Ficial/apfel https://github.com/Arthur-Ficial/apfel Apple Ai on the command line
- echion 6mo agoLooks excellent -- thanks; shame older intel macs don't get it (a lot of those still around)
- hmokiguess 6mo agoI've been having fun with this one https://github.com/osaurus-ai/osaurus https://github.com/osaurus-ai/osaurus
- koehr 6mo agoI just tried it. It downloaded Qwen3.5 2B on my phone and it's pretty coherent in its sentences, but really annoying with the amount of Ente products mentioned in every occasion. Other than that it's fast enough to talk to and definitely an easy way to run a model locally on your phone.
- sunaookami 6mo ago>but really annoying with the amount of Ente products mentioned in every occasion https://github.com/ente-io/ente/blob/f254af939ff6950b63edf5f13562f40d3d67c335/web/apps/ensu/src/pages/chat.tsx#L189 https://github.com/ente-io/ente/blob/f254af939ff6950b63edf5f... Here is the system prompt, kinda embarassing
- giuscri 6mo agowhat’s embarrassing about that?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Arn_Thor 6mo ago[dead]
- glitchc 6mo agoThis sounds like an ad.
- gwerbret 6mo agoAs do most of the associated comments. I think we're surrounded by bots.
- mschulze 6mo agoI'm not a bot. Check my comment history and account age.
- yomismoaqui 6mo agoYou sure were when you posted those comments, but now, we cannot be sure... So you look down you see a tortoise. It's crawling towards you.
- mschulze 6mo agoI mean I get it, astroturfing is a real problem and an annoying one for communities. But I also have no idea how to prove to you that I am neither a bot nor shilling here.
- yomismoaqui 6mo agoDon't worry, I was just joking about the future that await us.
- vaporwario 6mo agoagreed. i have never seen anyone (let alone an assortment) of hacker news users saying "i switched my 2fa to this after seeing how great it was!" Not really sure how one 'switches their 2fa' to an LLM...
- mschulze 6mo ago
- mkagenius 6mo agoHad used cactus before - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44524544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44524544 Then moved to pocket pal now for local llm.
- dgb23 6mo agoThe (hn) title is misleading (unlike the actual title): It's an LLM _App_ not an LLM.
- post-it 6mo ago> This is not the beginning, nor is this the end. This is just a checkpoint. Come onnnnnn. I would rather read a one line "Check out our offline llm" rather than a whole press release of slop. This looks very neat. I'm not familiar with the nitty gritty of AI so I really don't understand how it can reply so quickly running on an iPhone 16. But I'm not even going to bother searching for details because I don't want to read slop.
- maxloh 6mo agoThere is also another app called Off Grid, which lets you run any model from Hugging Face (of course you need to choose one your phone can handle). https://github.com/alichherawalla/off-grid-mobile-ai https://github.com/alichherawalla/off-grid-mobile-ai
- talking_penguin 6mo agoHow is this any different from Ollama plus Open Web UI?
- kennywinker 6mo agoNone of that runs on an ios or android device.
- Pythius 6mo ago[flagged]
- jubilanti 6mo agoThere's dozens of local inference apps that basically wrap llama.cpp and someone else's GGUFs. The decentralized sync history part seems new? Not much else. But the advertisement copy is so insufferably annoying in how it presents this wrapper as a product. Have a comparison chart to Ollama, LMStudio, LocalAI, Exo, Jan.AI, GPT4ALL, PocketPal, etc.
- bee_rider 6mo agoThere are so many wrappers that are obviously wrappers. I wonder if part of the value proposition here is that it is “like a product.” I have no idea if they actually achieve that, though, and doubt it really could be proven on a site.
- gardnr 6mo agooMLX is worth a look too if you are on a mac.
- cdrnsf 6mo agoI like Ente, but isn't their core product a photos application? Its offshoots like this and 2FA feel incongruous.
- alterom 6mo agoTheir core product is local ML inference in the context of a photo app, i.e. a drop-in cloud dependency removal/replacement for non-technical, privacy-conscious users as well as those who want advanced functionality offline. This does the same for language models.
- cdrnsf 6mo agoI hadn’t thought of it that way. Makes sense.
- FitchApps 6mo agoHave you tried WebLLM? Or this wrapper: CodexLocal.com Basically, you would have a rather simple but capable LLM right in your browser using WebLLM and GPU
- emehex 6mo agoThere are literally 1000s of these types of apps. Why is this on the Front Page?
- alterom 6mo ago1000s? I'd love to know a few more local LLM apps that are available on Android and iOS and Mac/PC under the same branding that I can point my non-technical friends to as a ChatGPT alternative that works offline (but still has sync across the devices). Could you recommend a few?
- imadch 6mo agoWhat do you mean by IA in your device ? is it a local LLM ? if yeas how much params 4B or 8B...?? device requirements not mentionned too
- kennywinker 6mo agoLooks like it checks your device specs and downloads whatever the best model that will work? On mine it’s using a 3.5b version of llama
- jasongill 6mo agoI love Ente Auth, but Ente (as a company/organization) does a somewhat poor job of calling out their non-photos apps in their branding and on their website. If you go to the "Download" button at the top of the page on this page about their LLM chat app, it downloads... their photo sharing application. If you click Sign Up, it takes you to a signup page with the browser title "Ente Photos" but the page text says "Private backups for your memories" with a picture of a lock - is that the Ente Auth signup, or the Ente Photos app signup? A little bit of cleanup on their site to break out "Ente, our original photo sharing app" from the rest of their apps would do wonders, because I had to search around on the announcement to find the download for this app, which feels about like trying to find the popular Ente Auth app on their website
- cromka 6mo agoThis is one of the reason I, as their user, am moving away. Things feel half-baked and I stopped trusting it with my data. I self host and the details for this were all over the place. Some of my contributions cleaning up the docs were rejected, so I grew even more wary. I am moving to Immich, even though I'd prefer e2ee for my photos even if I self host them. EDIT: and there are long-standing bugs like this one, unaddressed: https://github.com/ente-io/ente/issues/3087 https://github.com/ente-io/ente/issues/3087
- jasongill 6mo agoFurther proving my point, I wasn't sure if you - a fellow commenter! - were talking about Ente Auth or Ente Photos until I re-read your comment and the linked issue. I think that they have great product(s) but terrible branding and apparently some growing pains as well.
- cromka 6mo agoI used both, actually. I root for them, too, but for the time being I am splitting.
- kelvinjps10 6mo agoWell ente photos is the one that provides the funding
- tim-projects 6mo agoThis app isn't very useful but it did get me thinking. I have a phone in a drawer I could install termux and ollama on over tailscale and then I'd have an always on llm for super light tasks. I do really long for a private chat bot but I simply don't have access to the hardware required. Sadly I think it's going to be years to get there..
- QubridAI 6mo ago[flagged]
- FusionX 6mo agoGiven how the blog is presented, I assumed this was something novel that solved a unique problem, maybe a local multi-modal assistant for your device. I installed it and it's none of that. It is a mere wrapper around small local LLM models. And, it's not even multi-modal! Anyone could've one-shotted this in Claude in an hour (I'm not exaggerating). What's the target audience here? Your average person doesn't care about the privacy value proposition (at least not by severely sacrificing chat model's quality). And users who do want that control can already install LMStudio/Llama.cpp (which is dead simple to setup). The actual release product should've been what's described in "What's next" section. > Instead of general chat, we shape Ensu to have a more specialized interface, say like a single, never-ending note you keep writing on, while the LLM offers suggestions, critiques, reminders, context, alternatives, viewpoints, quotes. A second brain, if you will. > A more utilitarian take, say like an Android Launcher, where the LLM is an implementation detail behind an existing interaction that people are already used to. > Your agent, running on your phone. No setup, no management, no manual backups. An LLM that grows with you, remembers you, your choices, manages your tasks, and has long-term memory and personality.
- jubilanti 6mo ago> Anyone could've one-shotted this in Claude in an hour (I'm not exaggerating). This probably could have been one-shotted with Sonnet, not even Opus. Given how over indexed they are on LLM coding, Haiku might even be able to do it. This is actually an interesting coding model benchmark task now that I think about it.
- cyanydeez 6mo agoYou'd think any one of these great LLMs that claim coding is over would take a non-trivial app and just clone it while fully documenting the process. If it's so great, why is there so little viscera documenting it's greatness? Just lots and lots of words.
- girvo 6mo agoThey've done that for some tech, and the output has been... well, kind of impressive that it works at all, but bad in other ways (a GCC clone, SQLite re-impl, among others) Coding is definitely not over IMO. Not yet anyway
- white_dragon88 6mo ago[dead]
- BaudouinVH 6mo agoInstalled it on a not-so-young laptop. It crashes immediately after launch. I blame the laptop. If Ente is reading this : please add requirements to make it run (how many RAM, etc.)
- xtracto 6mo agoI would love to see a "distributed LLM" system, where people can easily setup a system to perform a "piece" of a "mega model" inference or training. Kind of like SETI@home but for an open LLM (like https://github.com/evilsocket/cake https://github.com/evilsocket/cake but massive ) Ideally if you "participate" in the network, you would get "credits" to use it proportionally to how much GPU power you have provided to the network. Or if you can't, then buy credits (payment would be distributed as credits to other participants). That way we could build huge LLMs that area really open and are not owned by any network. I would LOVE to participate in building that as well.
- mijkal 6mo agoThis is exactly what I've been building — mycellm.ai. Seed GPU when idle, earn credits, spend on inference. BitTorrent economics for LLM compute. It's live now (my homelab serves the public chat). Would love to have you involved — github.com/mycellm/mycellm
- xtracto 6mo agoOh yeah, and maybe call it "SkyNet" or something.
- kennywinker 6mo agohttps://docs.anarchai.org/ https://docs.anarchai.org/ This was posted the other day, but only briefly made the front page - seems kinda like what you’re talking about
- xtracto 6mo agoOooh thanks a lot. This looks promising. Maybe the only missing thing would be sone kind of (economic) incentive to share GPU power. Although the ability to use large models "for free" sounds pretty rad.
- kennywinker 6mo agoI’d volunteer my spare gpu time if i knew it was going to … idk basically anyone except spammers, scammers, and corpos.
- sbassi 6mo agoFor local LLM there are Ollama and LM Studio. How is this different?
- kennywinker 6mo agoThis seems like a great question to ask an offline llm that runs on your mobile device. Does ollama and Lm studio run on your mobile device?
- vvilliamperez 6mo agoI just use open claw as a local memory management system. Not sure from TFA what's new here.
- pugchat 6mo ago[dead]
- daikon899 6mo agoThe "What's next" section is more interesting than what shipped. A general-purpose chat wrapper around a 1-4B model occupies a crowded space — PocketPal, Jan, LMStudio, GPT4All all do similar things. But the ideas they gesture at (a persistent "second brain" note, an LLM-backed launcher, long-term memory that grows with you) are actually differentiated
- pulkitsh1234 6mo agoI am surprised to see this on HN front page, there is no new information here, just an ad.
- getpokedagain 6mo agoAs someone who saw this and was interested but also skeptical of this being low effort are there other open projects for running small models locally on android / iOS? I've found https://github.com/alichherawalla/off-grid-mobile-ai https://github.com/alichherawalla/off-grid-mobile-ai but haven't tried anything in this space yet.
- stressback 6mo agoGoogle's AI Edge Gallery worked really well for me. It's still in early access.
- RandomGerm4n 6mo agoI like the idea of having a user-friendly app that lets you use LLMs locally. Tools like Ollama and LMStudio tend to put most people off because you have to decide for yourself which models to use and there are so many settings to configure. If the hardware you’re using is compatible, Ensu could be a drop-in replacement for casual ChatGPT users. However, it’s a bit confusing because, for example, a larger LLM model was downloaded to my smartphone than to my computer. It would probably make the most sense if the app simply categorized devices into five different tiers and then, depending on which performance tier a device falls into, downloaded the appropriate model and simply informed the user of the performance tier. Over time, it would then be possible to periodically replace the LLM for each tier with better ones, or to redefine the device performance tiers based on hardware advancements.
- drak0n1c 6mo agoOsaurus is what I use for local - it's a native Swift macOS app with sandboxing, agent tooling, and server capabilities. Mac only though.
- jimmyjazz14 6mo agoLLMStudio is pretty darn easy and if I recall it recommends a model to install when you first start it
- selfawareMammal 6mo ago> People called us crazy. Absolutely no one called them crazy.
- razvan_maftei 6mo agoLooks like something spun up by Claude Code without thorough testing or design behind it sadly.
- tmanderson 6mo agobeware of data rackets
- socalgal2 6mo agoWhat's special about Ente? How does it compare to Jan AI for example? or LM Studio? or ????
- alterom 6mo agoIt's available on Android and iOS, and specifically on Play Store and Apple Store (so no "developer mode" hoops to jump through to install).
- aplomb1026 6mo ago[dead]
- buster 6mo agoI don't understand all the hate about ente, to be honest. Ente seems to try to solve the big tech lock in with their apps. Personally, i'm a very happy Ente Photos user, so what's the problem with Ensu? It's available on desktops and mobile, it's an app trying to give all a little bit more privacy and freedom and yet most comments are just hating on it. If you can vibe code Ensu in a week end, please do. Make a better clone if you want to, but don't hate on someone for their work for stupid reasons.
- alterom 6mo agoI think the hate boils down to "I could've built it in a day with Claude, but didn't, so they suck" sour grapes. When the comments here say "there's no value because anyone could've compiled llama.cpp", you can see how detached from reality these people are. Even jumping through the hoops to get an app on Play Store and Apple Store — an app that I can tell my friends to look up and download — is worth a lot. An app that is also is available on Mac and PC, mind you. I'm an ex-Google/Meta/Microsoft/Roblox software engineer, and I couldn't be bothered to do any of that. Neither could the rest of HN. But I'm not the one complaining about lack of novelty or value in this proposition.
- MillironX 6mo agoMy personal gripe with Ente is that they seem to value making new half-baked products over making their current products feature-complete. Case-in-point: RAW photos are still not supported in Ente Photos [1]. Locker and now Ensu got priority over a key feature in making the Photos app a photos app. [1]: https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/625 https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/625
- todotask2 6mo agoModel is last trained on Dec 2023, that's consider outdated.
- prism56 6mo ago[dead]
- georaa 6mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- JulianPembroke 6mo ago[dead]
- sneak 6mo agoMeanwhile, my Ente photos app crashes 20 times a day on iOS when using advanced functionality such as scrolling through my photos. They also have a TOTP auth app? If their photos app stopped crashing and they pursued basic feature parity between their iOS and desktop apps (IMO table stakes for a photo sync service) I'd have no issue recommending them. Instead, it seems like every so often they just branch off into a new direction, leaving the existing products unfinished. It's like Mozilla-level lack of focus.
- vishnukvmd 6mo agoHi, could you please share logs from Settings > Support > Report bug? We'd like to fix the crashes. Sorry for the troubles.
- eddie-wang 6mo ago[dead]
- gverrilla 6mo agoWe hate big tech, because we want to become one ourselves!
- codethief 6mo agoI've been a big fan of Ente and their work and am a paying customer but, man, this comment in a long-standing GitHub feature request is ringing truer every day: > Ente is becoming like Proton: too many products and a lack of focus, leading to lower quality and not delivering what customers want https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/552#discussioncomment-16083376 https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/552#discussionco...
- vishnukvmd 6mo agoHi, we had addressed this concern (along with the timelines for nested albums) during our recent AMA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lkTspvi_mM&t=1728s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lkTspvi_mM&t=1728s If you have any follow up questions, please do ask.
- codethief 6mo agoHi Vishnu, thanks for engaging here – it is highly appreciated! Let me respond to a couple of your statements from the interview: > I think it's important to offer a complete package I agree. But doesn't that start with making one product (Ente Photos) good enough for people to actually be able to migrate? If Ente Photo really is your "home ground", as you say, shouldn't you prioritize accordingly? Specifically, in your response[0] to the GitHub issue I linked you say > to pull it off with the finesse we would like, it will take us more than a quarter. […] I will mark this feature as unplanned until we have more engineering bandwidth. But it seems you really do have the engineering bandwidth! You've just been prioritizing other products besides Ente Photos. I do understand that folder nesting in particular is a non-trivial change and if you look at the discussion on GitHub, I've actually been defending you rather heavily. But it's becoming increasingly difficult to do so – quite frankly, I am starting to doubt your product management is entirely on the right track if in 3 years you can't dedicate 3 months to the feature request with the highest number of votes by far. More generally, I am losing trust that any of your products will see enough polishing any time soon. (So I will definitely not put time into migrating anything else if I can't even migrate my photos yet.) And it seems I'm not the only one thinking that – your reputation among enthusiasts is starting to take a hit. > There is no way Ente is going to let anyone else build a better photo app. Words to live by! :-) [0]: https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/552#discussioncomment-15074142 https://github.com/ente-io/ente/discussions/552#discussionco...
- fouc 6mo agothis is a weird HN thread, there's so many accounts spontaneously posting in here, both fairly new accounts and even aged accounts, with a mix of low karma and high-ish karma.. I spotted at least 5 suspicious accounts. There's 3 or 4 of them in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47517096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47517096 alone..
- treexs 6mo ago? hundreds of local llm apps exist the what's next section acts novel but all of them have been achieved or created in some format already: you can run a local llm on a phone and connect it to a agent
- omdv 6mo agoThe content itself, the unexpectedly high rating and weird vibe in the comments smells like bot's manipulation. I hope mods take a look.
- qprofyeh 6mo agoFor the ones who tried this out but want to uninstall and remove the downloaded model, because it's an iPad app it's located here: /Users/username/Library/Containers/Ensu