A native Mac chat client for the LLM polyglot

What it does

macai is a native macOS chat client built in SwiftUI that talks to virtually every major AI provider—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, xAI, Perplexity, OpenRouter, and Ollama—without opening a browser. It keeps conversations, settings, and personas in one place, syncing them across your Macs via iCloud if you choose.

The interesting bit

In a sea of Electron wrappers, macai is actually native: lightweight, respecting the Mac’s light/dark mode, and using CloudKit for history sync rather than a proprietary backend. It treats your API keys as direct credentials, not a service layer, so the app stays offline-capable with local models.

Key highlights

• Supports both cloud APIs and local Ollama instances out of the box
• Native SwiftUI interface with light/dark mode, vision, image generation, search, and reasoning support
• iCloud sync for chats and settings across devices (requires Apple Developer setup for custom builds)
• No telemetry or usage tracking by the app itself
• Universal binary for Intel and Apple Silicon, requiring macOS 14.0+

Caveats

• iCloud sync is disabled by default in debug builds and requires an Apple Developer account plus a custom CloudKit container for forks
• Apple may collect anonymized telemetry when iCloud sync is enabled, despite the app itself tracking nothing

Verdict

Developers who want a single, native Mac interface for juggling multiple LLM providers—and value local Ollama support—should take a look. If you live entirely in the browser or need cross-platform support, this is not your app.