Oh My HuggingFace

Important

UNOFFICIAL. Oh My HuggingFace is an independent, community-built desktop client for the Hugging Face Hub. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Hugging Face, Inc. "Hugging Face" is a trademark of Hugging Face, Inc. and is used here only to refer to the service this application connects to.

An open-source, cross-platform (macOS / Windows / Linux) desktop client for browsing the Hugging Face Hub, managing large model downloads, and plugging models into your local AI toolchain.

Privacy-first: everything stays on your machine. No telemetry, no analytics, no external services beyond the Hugging Face API itself. Your access token is encrypted with your OS keychain (Electron safeStorage) and stored in ~/.oh_my_hf/credentials.json with owner-only permissions.

Features

• Browse — Models / Datasets / Spaces / Daily Papers in a three-pane, keyboard-first UI with virtualized lists, instant model-card rendering (sanitized Markdown), file trees, and metadata.
• Search everything — Cmd/Ctrl+K command palette: search, filter (task, library, license), and sort (trending / likes / downloads).
• Sign in — paste a Hugging Face User Access Token; it is encrypted at rest, never stored in plaintext, never in localStorage.
• Download manager — resumable, parallel, queued downloads with speed limiting, SHA-256 verification, and system notifications. Files land in the standard HF cache layout, fully interoperable with transformers, huggingface-cli, and friends.
• Cache visualizer — scan your HF cache, see disk usage per repo, and clean stale revisions with one click.
• Follow & inbox — follow users/orgs/repos and Daily Papers; get system notifications.
• Compare — 2–4 models side by side (params, license, downloads, likes).
• Upload & export — scan and upload local folders safely; export downloaded files to Ollama, LM Studio, or ComfyUI with progress and cancellation.
• History — local, searchable browsing history with repository-type filters.
• i18n — English and 简体中文 built in; adding a language is a single JSON folder.
• Dark & light themes, native menus, and OS conventions on every platform.
• In-app updates — installed builds compare their version with the latest published GitHub Release, then download and restart-install only after explicit confirmation.

Install

Grab the latest release for your platform from GitHub Releases:

• macOS — .dmg
• Windows — .exe (NSIS installer)
• Linux — .AppImage or .deb

macOS: Gatekeeper / quarantine

macOS release builds use the stable self-signed OhMyHF-Release certificate; local builds remain ad-hoc signed. Neither is Developer ID notarized (see docs/signing.md). After a browser download, first launch may still need:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Oh My HuggingFace.app"

or right-click the app → Open → Open.

The app can discover new GitHub Releases from Settings → About. Releases signed with the same self-signed certificate can update in-app; older or differently signed installations use the GitHub Releases link as the one-time manual fallback.

Development

Prerequisites: Node.js ≥ 22, pnpm ≥ 11 (corepack enable), and a C++ toolchain for native modules (Xcode CLT on macOS, build-essential on Linux, VS Build Tools on Windows).

pnpm install        # installs deps and rebuilds better-sqlite3 for Electron
pnpm dev            # launches the app with hot reload
pnpm test           # unit tests (vitest)
pnpm typecheck      # strict TS across the workspace
pnpm lint           # ESLint (includes hardcoded-string checks for i18n)
pnpm build          # production build of every package

Platform packaging (from apps/desktop):

pnpm --filter oh-my-huggingface-desktop build:linux   # AppImage + deb
pnpm --filter oh-my-huggingface-desktop build:mac     # dmg (ad-hoc signed)
pnpm --filter oh-my-huggingface-desktop build:win     # nsis

Sign-in

Paste a User Access Token in Settings → Account. Prefer a write token (or a fine-grained token with the permissions you need) so downloads of gated repos, discussions, collections, and Hub notifications all work. The token is encrypted with the OS keychain and stored at ~/.oh_my_hf/credentials.json.

Security

• The token is encrypted with the OS keychain (Electron safeStorage) and stored at ~/.oh_my_hf/credentials.json (0600), never plaintext and never in localStorage. The file lives outside the per-profile userData directory so every session — packaged app, pnpm dev, extra profiles — shares one login. OMH_CREDENTIALS_DIR relocates it (tests use this for isolation). Deleting the file signs you out everywhere.
• No network calls forward the token cross-host: the Authorization header is only sent to huggingface.co API hosts, never to the CDN/resolve redirect targets.

Releasing

Releases are cut from main by a commit whose subject is [RELEASE] Vx.y.z. See docs/releasing.md for the full flow; in short: bump all four workspace manifest versions, then land a commit titled e.g. [RELEASE] V0.2.0. CI verifies the source, builds and smoke-tests all three platforms, and validates the updater manifests before it creates the v0.2.0 tag or draft release. Publishing happens only after the remote asset list is verified.

Architecture

packages/shared     @oh-my-huggingface/shared    shared types + typed IPC contract
packages/hub-api    @oh-my-huggingface/hub-api   pure-TS Hub API client (zero Electron deps)
apps/desktop        oh-my-huggingface-desktop    electron-vite app (main / preload / renderer)

• The main process owns all network, downloads, cache scanning, and polling (via hub-api); heavy work runs in worker_threads off the main thread.
• The renderer is view-only React (React Router, Zustand, TanStack Query/Virtual, Tailwind, Radix). contextIsolation: true, nodeIntegration: false, sandbox: true, strict CSP.
• The whole IPC surface is a typed contract in packages/shared — no magic strings; every handler validates its input.
• Local SQLite (better-sqlite3) stores favorites, history, download tasks, follows, and settings. The token lives only in the separate safeStorage-encrypted credentials file; a legacy database token is migrated and deleted on first successful restore.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Translations are especially welcome — locales live in apps/desktop/src/renderer/src/i18n/locales/<lang>/ (renderer) and apps/desktop/src/main/i18n/locales/ (native menus & notifications).

License

Apache-2.0. Not affiliated with Hugging Face, Inc.

Friendly Link

• linux.do —— Where possible begins