How-to

How to download an Outlier model tier

Last updated 2026-11-04

What you need first for “how to download an outlier model tier”

Apple Silicon Mac, macOS 15 or later, and for how to download an outlier model tier the unified-memory minimum that the chosen tier requires (6 GB for Nano, 12 GB for Lite, 16 GB for Quick (24 GB to run it fully in memory), 24 GB for Core and Vision 3.8, 64 GB for Plus). For download a model tier, those are the minimums to load a tier; a long agent session needs more. You need the internet to download each model (and once to activate a Pro key); after that, chat works offline.

Steps

1. Open Settings > Models. Each tier shows its disk size and minimum RAM.
2. Click Download. The pull is HTTPS only; no auth token is needed for the public repos.
3. Wait for the green check. The app verifies the safetensors and tokenizer before marking the tier ready.
4. Switch tiers in chat. The active tier is shown in the bottom bar of the chat window.

What is the specific thing to know about this guide?

Each tier’s safetensors are pulled from a public Hugging Face repository, none of them gated. Nano, Lite, Quick and Core are Outlier’s own repositories, under the Outlier-Ai namespace. Plus and Vision 3.8 are not: the app pulls Plus from mlx-community/Qwen3.5-397B-A17B-4bit at 209 GB and Vision 3.8 from mlx-community/Qwen3.8-27B-4bit at 15.5 GB, public community conversions of Qwen’s models.

Check free space before starting rather than during: the picker lists each tier’s size next to its minimum RAM, and the gap between them is wide. Nano is 2.37 GB and will sit on almost any machine; Core is 15.13 GB, Quick 15.61 GB, and Plus is 209 GB, which is more than the entire internal drive on a good many Macs still in daily use.

What can go wrong with this guide?

• Hugging Face download interrupted partway leaves a half-checkpoint; the picker UI detects this on next launch and offers to resume.
• Slow networks make the Plus tier’s 209 GB pull effectively a multi-hour task.

How does this guide differ from the cloud equivalent?

Cloud-side model selection happens in a dropdown bound to a billing tier. Outlier’s model picker happens once, against on-disk weights you fetched yourself.

What does this guide not claim about “how to download an outlier model tier”?

This guide does not claim feature parity with cloud-side workflows for “how to download an outlier model tier”. Specifically, the product surface covers chat, file attachment, the local agent loop, project scoping, and the model picker. Cross-device sync, team workspaces, and shared session history are out of scope and are not on the v1.9 backlog either.

How does the model picker decide which tier is enabled?

The backend reads the Mac’s reported unified memory at startup and toggles each tier’s enabled flag based on a 15% slack against the tier’s min_ram_gb. That check is the reason Nano stays available on a 6 GB Mac while Core appears greyed out on the same hardware.

Where does this guide fit in the rest of the lineup?

The Plus tier is the outlier on size: 209 GB versus the next-largest Quick at 15.61 GB. Most users start with Nano or Lite, then graduate to Core once they have a use case that exercises the heavier weights.

One unique number

4 steps. Once the model is downloaded your chats and files stay on your Mac. Tier sizes range from 2.37 GB (Nano) to 209 GB (Plus); the Quick tier is 15.61 GB and Core is 15.13 GB.

Download Outlier for Mac

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Free · M1 or newer · macOS 15+ (free update) · 276 MB. Intel Macs are not supported.