helmstudio: a native MLX/Metal launcher for open-weight models on Apple Silicon
janishar · reddit · 2026-09-20
A developer details why ComfyUI struggles on Apple Silicon — no MLX support, PyTorch MPS moving tensors unnecessarily, no fp8 dtype (requiring a third-party node with 256-entry lookup tables and 600-second Metal kernel builds) — and built helmstudio as a fix: a local launcher where each open-weight model lives as its own "studio" repo, installed via manifest with shared storage, gallery and history. Currently running: MiniMax-H3 (native Metal video+audio), LTX-2.3/2.5 (22B, MLX with synced sound), FLUX.2 Klein and Z-Image Turbo (native Metal), and zero-shot voice cloning (still MPS). Requires 32GB RAM (64GB for video studios); unsigned Mac app needs a quarantine flag cleared. Open source on GitHub.
Related event: Dev Builds Native Apple Silicon Model Launcher Tired of Slow ComfyUI(2 posts)→
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