Open WebUI is the most popular graphical interface for Ollama. It gives you a ChatGPT-style web interface running entirely on your own hardware, with no data leaving your machine.

What You'll Build

A fully offline, private AI chat interface accessible from any device on your local network. Features include:

Chat history stored locally
Multiple models switchable mid-conversation
Image uploads (with vision models)
RAG (upload documents to chat with)
User management (useful for home/office shared access)
OpenAI-compatible API proxy

Prerequisites

Ollama installed (see the Ollama setup guide)
Docker Desktop installed (Windows/macOS) or Docker Engine (Linux)
8 GB+ RAM, any GPU (or CPU-only)

Step 1: Install Docker

Windows/macOS: Download Docker Desktop from docker.com and follow the installer.

Linux (Ubuntu):

bash

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Step 2: Start Ollama

Make sure Ollama is running and accessible:

bash

ollama serve

Pull your first model:

bash

ollama pull llama3.1:8b

Step 3: Launch Open WebUI with Docker

If Ollama is running on the same machine:

bash

docker run -d -p 3000:8080 \
  --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway \
  -v open-webui:/app/backend/data \
  --name open-webui \
  --restart always \
  ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main

If Ollama is on a different machine (e.g., desktop accessed from laptop):

bash

docker run -d -p 3000:8080 \
  -e OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://192.168.1.100:11434 \
  -v open-webui:/app/backend/data \
  --name open-webui \
  --restart always \
  ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main

Step 4: First Launch

Open your browser to http://localhost:3000
Create an admin account (the first user becomes admin)
Select a model from the dropdown at the top
Start chatting!

Step 5: Access From Other Devices

Reaching it from another device also means Ollama itself must listen beyond localhost, which is a two-part change on Windows — see OLLAMA_HOST and the Defender firewall rule before you open anything.

To use your AI from your phone or tablet on the same network:

Find your computer's local IP: run ipconfig (Windows) or ip addr (Linux/Mac)
Open http://192.168.x.x:3000 on your phone
Works just like a web app — no app install required

Configure RAG (Chat with Your Documents)

Open WebUI has built-in RAG support:

Go to Settings → Documents and set the embedding model to nomic-embed-text
Pull the embedding model: ollama pull nomic-embed-text
In any chat, click the + button and upload a PDF, Word doc, or text file
Ask questions about the document — Open WebUI retrieves relevant chunks and feeds them to the LLM

Useful Settings to Configure

Setting	Location	Recommendation
Default model	Settings → Interface	Set your most-used model
Title generation	Settings → Interface	Auto-generate conversation titles
RAG embedding	Settings → Documents	Use nomic-embed-text
Memory	Settings → Personalization	Enable for persistent user context
System prompt	Model → System Prompt	Customize the AI's personality

Updating Open WebUI

bash

docker pull ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main
docker stop open-webui
docker rm open-webui
# Re-run the docker run command from Step 3

Your chat history is stored in the Docker volume (open-webui) and persists across updates.

Troubleshooting

"Connection error" when opening WebUI:

Make sure Ollama is running: ollama serve
Check the --add-host flag is included in your Docker command

Models not showing up:

Run ollama list to confirm models are pulled
Refresh the WebUI model selector

Slow responses:

Ensure your GPU is being used: look for GPU activity in Task Manager / nvtop
Check that Ollama is not running in CPU-only mode

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