Llama

Local LLMs, one click away — right from your Windows system tray.

Llama is a Windows 11 tray app for running llama.cpp models locally. It's a WinUI 3 port of Llama for Mac.

Grab the latest .msixbundle (x64 + ARM64) from Releases and double-click to install.

• Lives in your tray — a borderless, Mica-backed flyout anchored to the tray icon
• Zero-setup llama.cpp — uses your existing llama.exe, or downloads one for you
• One-click models — browse and download recommended models from the Hugging Face Hub
• Model details — click any model for a context-length picker with per-option memory estimates (read from the GGUF header), remembered per model, plus chat, copy-model-ID, curl-request, and Hugging Face actions
• Standard storage — models live in the Hugging Face cache, shared with llama.cpp and other tools
• Spotlight-like overlay — press Alt+Space from any app to chat with your loaded model

Alt+Space from any app opens a borderless window with the WebUI for whichever model is loaded. It hides instead of closing, so re-summoning is instant and your conversation is still there.

Llama manages a llama serve process and talks to it over its REST API. Your models stay in the standard Hugging Face cache (%USERPROFILE%\.cache\huggingface\hub), shared with llama.cpp and HF tooling. Settings and logs live under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Llama.

Llama sends no telemetry — no events, no analytics, no install id. The only thing outbound HTTP requests (model downloads, release-update checks, and calls to the local llama-server) carry is the standard User-Agent header:

llama-win/0.12.0 (10.0.26100; x64)

— the app version, the Windows build, and the processor architecture. Prompts and inference stay 100% local.

You'll need the .NET 10 SDK on Windows (ARM64 or x64 host; the SDK cross-builds both).

The WinUI app is built per-platform — pass the matching -p:Platform alongside the -r runtime identifier:

dotnet build LlamaApp.csproj -c Release -r win-arm64 -p:Platform=ARM64
dotnet build LlamaApp.csproj -c Release -r win-x64   -p:Platform=x64
dotnet build LlamaApp.csproj -c Release -r win-x86   -p:Platform=x86

# run the unit tests (two test projects; see the ARM64 note below)
dotnet test LlamaApp.Tests/LlamaApp.Tests.csproj -c Release
dotnet test LlamaApp.LlamaCpp.Tests/LlamaApp.LlamaCpp.Tests.csproj -c Release

To get a runnable (unpackaged, loose-files) build, publish it. This is what
[`.github/workflows/publish.yml`](.github/workflows/publish.yml) produces:

```bash
dotnet publish LlamaApp.csproj -c Release -r win-arm64 -p:Platform=ARM64 \
    --self-contained true -p:PublishReadyToRun=false -p:PublishSingleFile=false \
    -o publish/win-arm64

The app runs unpackaged from that folder. Trim/R2R are off in the official builds because the app relies on reflection-based JSON serialization and COM dynamic interop, which the trimmer would strip (see the IL2026/IL2072 warnings if you enable PublishTrimmed).

Testing on an ARM64 host: LlamaApp.Tests references the WinUI app, which the test project pins to x64 (SetPlatform=Platform=x64), so the app assembly it loads is x64. On ARM64 Windows, run that suite under the x64 .NET runtime (installed at C:\Program Files\dotnet\x64) with --arch x64:

dotnet test LlamaApp.Tests/LlamaApp.Tests.csproj -c Release --arch x64

LlamaApp.LlamaCpp.Tests is platform-agnostic and runs natively.

The installed release is a signed .msix, produced by the CI (.github/workflows/_build.yml) with Visual Studio MSBuild and the GenerateAppxPackage target — dotnet build alone does not pack the Appx. dotnet publish above is sufficient for local use.

Made with 🦙 for Windows 11 · Models run 100% locally — your prompts never leave your machine.