Open WebUI: Your Local ChatGPT

Open WebUI is a self-hosted web interface for Ollama that transforms local large language models into a ChatGPT-like experience, running entirely on the user's machine with no data leaving it. It supports features such as model switching during conversations, file uploads for document analysis, voice input, web search integration, and local image generation. The tool can be installed via Docker or pip, offers multi-user support, and ensures data privacy by connecting to a local Ollama instance.

Transform your local LLM into a beautiful, full-featured web interface — like ChatGPT, but running entirely on your machine. Open WebUI is a self-hosted web interface for Ollama. It gives you: Best of all: It connects to your local Ollama instance — no data ever leaves your machine. qwen2.5:7b Docker is the easiest way. One command and you're done: docker run -d \ -p 3000:8080 \ -v open-webui:/app/backend/data \ -e OLLAMA BASE URL=http://host.docker.internal:11434 \ --name open-webui \ --restart always \ ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main What this does: -p 3000:8080 — makes it available at http://localhost:3000 -v open-webui:/app/backend/data — keeps your chats saved even if you restart-e OLLAMA BASE URL — tells it where your Ollama is running--restart always — auto-starts when your computer boots Check logs — you should see "Application startup complete" docker logs open-webui --tail 20 Then open http://localhost:3000 in your browser. First time? Create an account. Don't worry — it's local only. Your data stays on your machine. If you don't have Docker: Install pip install open-webui Run open-webui serve Then open http://localhost:8080. After logging in, Open WebUI looks and feels like ChatGPT: Key areas: In the top dropdown, you can switch models during a conversation. Each model sees the same chat history. qwen2.5:7b for general chatdeepseek-r1:14b when you need hard reasoningcodellama for code tasksClick the paperclip icon and upload a PDF, Word doc, or text file. The model can then answer questions about it. Use cases: Click the microphone icon to speak instead of type. This works in Chrome and Edge. In Settings → Model, you can adjust: Open WebUI can integrate with local image generators: Add Automatic1111 Stable Diffusion docker run -d \ -p 7860:7860 \ -v sd-models:/models \ --gpus all \ asd/stable-diffusion-webui:latest Then configure in Open WebUI Settings → Image Generation. Enable web search in Settings → Web Search. Open WebUI will search the internet when answering questions. For secure remote access behind a VPN or tunnel : Using Caddy as a reverse proxy docker run -d \ -p 443:443 \ -v open-webui:/app/backend/data \ -e OLLAMA BASE URL=http://ollama:11434 \ -e WEBUI SECRET KEY=your-secret-here \ --name open-webui \ ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main Open WebUI supports multiple users out of the box. Each user: To add users: Go to Settings → Admin Panel → Users → Create User. Next step: Now that you have a GUI, try setting up Local RAG — let your LLM answer questions about your own documents. Part of the Local LLM Guide — the definitive resource for running AI on your own hardware.