Sideload models

Advanced

You can use compatible models you've downloaded outside of LM Studio by placing them in the expected directory structure.

Overview

Simply open LM Studio's models directory in Finder or File Explorer, create a couple of new folders, and move the model file into the correct location. See the expected directory structure below.

LM Studio's expected models directory structure

LM Studio aims to preserves the directory structure of models downloaded from Hugging Face. The expected directory structure is as follows:

~/.cache/lm-studio/models/
└── publisher/
    └── model/
        └── model-file.gguf

For example, if you have a model named ocelot-v1 published by infra-ai, the structure would look like this:

~/.cache/lm-studio/models/
└── infra-ai/
    └── ocelot-v1/
        └── ocelot-v1-instruct-q4_0.gguf

LM Studio's models directory

Manage your models directory in the My Models tab

By default, LM Studio downloads models to the following locations.

macOS or Linux

~/.cache/lm-studio/models

Windows

%USERPROFILE%\.cache\lm-studio\models

Community

Chat with other LM Studio users, discuss LLMs, hardware, and more on the LM Studio Discord server.