Documentation
Offline Operation
In general, LM Studio does not require the internet in order to work. Several operations, described below, rely on internet connectivity. Once you get an LLM onto your machine, you should be good to go entirely offline.
There are several features within LM Studio that necessitate making network requests. Without internet the following functionality will not work, but you should be able to use everything else the app offers.
When you search for models in the Discover tab, LM Studio makes network requests (e.g. to huggingface.co). Search will not work without internet connection.
In order to download models you need a stable (and decently fast) internet connection. You can also 'sideload' models (use models that were procured outside the app). See instructions for sideloading models.
Any given version of LM Studio ships with an initial model catalog built-in. The entries in the catalog are typically the state of the online catalog near the moment we cut the release. However, in order to show stats and download options for each model, we need to make network requests (e.g. to huggingface.co).
LM Runtimes are individually packaged software libraries, or LLM engines, that allow running certain formats of models (e.g. llama.cpp). As of LM Studio 0.3.0 (read the announcement) it's easy to download and even hot-swap runtimes without a full LM Studio update. To check for available runtimes, and to download them, we need to make network requests.
On macOS and Windows, LM Studio has a built-in app updater that's capable. The linux in-app updater is in the works. When you open LM Studio, the app updater will make a network request to check if there are any new updates available. If there's a new version, the app will show you a notification to update now or later. Without internet connectivity you will not be able to update the app via the in-app updater.