Fennel
Fennel logomark

Fennel

Your Mac. Your choice.

A voice assistant that runs entirely on your own machine. Pick a model, let it download once, and then talk.

Download for Apple Silicon View on GitHub

Free and open source · macOS 14 or later · About 560 MB

Hello.

Tap the orb and speak, or just type below.

Own your AI. Own your data.

No account. No subscription. No usage limits.

Fennel makes a small, fixed set of network requests, and each one is a switch you control.

Network & Privacy
Model download
Once, and only after you press the button
Required once
Web search
Live results with your own free Ollama key. Falls back to Wikipedia otherwise.
Daily briefing
Forecast from Open-Meteo, headlines from BBC, NPR, Ars Technica
Turn these off and Fennel makes no outside requests at all — the app says so, and names every service.

One app, local models, no cloud

Talks. Listens. Draws. Looks things up.

Tap the orb to have a back-and-forth conversation, or type.

PartWhat runsWhat it does
ConversationYour chosen modelAnswers, remembers, uses tools
HearingWhisper small.enTurns speech into text
VoiceKokoro-82MSpeaks the reply as it's written
ImagesFLUX.2 Klein 4BDraws from a description, about a minute each

Barge-in, fast replies, natural conversation.

Choose what runs

Six models. Or any model.

Pick one to load into memory. Or use any MLX model from HuggingFace.

Everyday Default
Qwen3 · 4B — the default balance
2.3 GB
Light
Qwen3 · 1.7B — answers fastest
1.0 GB
Code
Qwen2.5 Coder · 7B — code and shell
4.3 GB
Balanced
Qwen3 · 8B — longer reasoning
4.6 GB
Creative
Rocinante X · 12B — prose and character
6.9 GB
Agent
Hermes 4 · 14B — tools and multi-step work
8.3 GB

Each one has been fine-tuned to integrate best with Fennel and run well on 16 and 24GB Macs.

Or bring your own

Paste any MLX model from Hugging Face. Fennel will tell you if its compatible before downloading.

owner/model-name Check

Larger models may lead to slower replies. Check your Mac hardware compatibility.

It does things

Not just chat.

Reminders and calendar events are real EventKit entries — they show up in Apple's own Reminders and Calendar.

Your day
  • set_reminder
  • add_event
  • agenda
  • set_timer
Looking things up
  • search_web Ollama
  • search_wikipedia free
Your Mac
  • open_app
  • run_shortcut
  • create_shortcut
  • open_link
Pictures
  • Image generation
In conversation
  • show_panel
  • recommend_song
  • set_fact
Call mom
Tomorrow, 4:00 PM
Web search
3 results, via Ollama
Generating image
fennel bulb in a garden

Tell it something once and it holds on to it — across restarts, sessions, and model changes.

Web search, powered by Ollama

Current, when you want it to be.

Fennel knows what it was trained on. Add a free Ollama key and it can search the live web too — three steps, and your search terms go to Ollama and nowhere else.

1
Get a key
Sign in at ollama.com and create an API key from your account settings. A free tier is available — check current limits there.
2
Add it to Fennel
Paste it into Fennel's network panel. It's stored in your Mac's Keychain, not in a settings file.
3
Turn lookups on
Your search terms go to Ollama, and nothing else does.

One file. Then it's yours.

Everything Fennel needs is inside the app — download once then choose the models to add to your Mac.

Download for Apple Silicon

About 560 MB, plus 1–8 GB for the model you choose

  • Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) — no Intel support
  • macOS 14 or later
  • 16 GB of memory runs the smaller models comfortably · 24 GB runs anything on the list
  • Image generation is optional — its model downloads separately at 4.6 GB
  • Internet needed once, for the model download
  • Free and open source under GPL-3.0
  • Right-click the app and press open.