Claude Desktop can now easily run Qwen, DeepSeek and Kimi models — after Ollama’s first effort stalled
Open-weight model runner Ollama has reintroduced an integration with Claude Desktop that lets users connect Anthropic’s app to models served via Ollama, including those running locally on their machines.
This effectively means Claude users can tap into Ollama’s library, which includes popular models such as Qwen, DeepSeek, Kimi, and GLM, while remaining within the Claude Desktop interface — with Ollama serving as the gateway to whichever model handles the request.
A second shot at Claude Desktop
This isn’t Ollama’s first attempt to bring its model catalog to Anthropic’s tools. Back in January, the company added support for Anthropic’s Messages API, allowing Claude Code to point to Ollama and use local or cloud-hosted models instead of Claude.
In April, Anthropic quietly opened a similar opportunity within the Claude Desktop app, adding a developer setting that let it connect to third-party inference gateways. Ollama seized on that with ollama launch claude-desktop, which configured the desktop app to use Ollama; however, the integration lasted mere days — following a Claude Desktop update, users found that the app’s gateway accepted the connection but rejected non-Anthropic model IDs. And so Ollama removed the feature, saying Claude Desktop’s third-party integration had become “limited to Anthropic models.”
Fast forward to Aug. 21, and Ollama quietly introduced a new implementation in v0.33.0 that addresses that mismatch with a dedicated local proxy for Claude Desktop. In a blog post published on Tuesday formally announcing the support, Ollama notes that developers can now configure Claude Desktop to use it as a “third-party gateway provider.” Ollama itself handles the setup: users open the Ollama app, select Claude, and enable the integration, after which Ollama automatically configures Claude Desktop’s third-party gateway. Switching it off restores the user’s previous Claude setup.
As part of the update, Ollama has also added the Claude integration directly to its Mac menu, where users can toggle “Use Ollama models” on or off.
Once enabled, models available through Ollama — whether running locally or via Ollama Cloud — appear in Claude Desktop’s model picker, allowing users to select one without leaving Anthropic’s app.
Because Claude Desktop is built around Anthropic’s own model options, Ollama also lets users choose which underlying model should sit behind each slot. In the example below, selecting “Opus 5” routes the request to Kimi K3, while “Sonnet 5” maps to DeepSeek V4 Pro.
It is also worth noting that the “Auto mode” option preserves Claude Desktop’s built-in Auto mode, which lets the app decide when it should ask the user for permission before making changes.
Community questions
The launch prompted a swathe of questions from the community on X, perhaps chief among them: why use an alternative model through Claude Desktop rather than use Claude?
The answer, perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, comes down to choice. The company points to cost, speed, and portability, as well as the ability to use models fine-tuned on a developer’s own data. Users can choose between models running locally or on Ollama Cloud, and, of course, they can still lean on Anthropic’s frontier models wherever they like.
Some developers also wondered how any of this differed from using Ollama with Claude Code, which was already possible. Claude Code is Anthropic’s terminal-based coding agent, and could already be pointed at Ollama’s Anthropic-compatible API to use local or cloud models. This release brings the same basic idea directly to the Claude Desktop app.
“The future of AI is open models running everywhere work gets done.”
For now, the new Claude Desktop integration is limited to Ollama’s Mac app, though Ollama suggested in replies on X that Windows support might be in the works.
‘Open models running everywhere work gets done’
Claude Desktop support arrives less than two months after Ollama raised a $65 million funding round. In a statement issued at the time of the funding announcement in July, Ollama co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Morgan described a future in which open models are available wherever developers choose to work.
“Open models should be easy to run, easy to build with, and available wherever people need them — on your own machine, in the cloud, or both,” Morgan said. “Ollama started as an open-source project, and has since grown into a community of millions of developers. Everything we do next is in service of that community and their best work. The future of AI is open models running everywhere work gets done — and Ollama is here to power this shift.”
The update also builds on Ollama’s broader push to make local models easier to use within existing developer tools. At the same time, recent work, such as native Apple MLX support, has focused on improving local inference on Macs.
Support for Claude Desktop is the latest expression of that strategy: letting developers keep the apps they already use while Ollama supplies the underlying model.
