Build It

Accessing Your Setup From Other Devices on Your Network

Reach your local AI chat interface from your phone or laptop on the couch, not just from the machine it is installed on - using your home network, nothing more.

10 minute read

Why this matters

Everything up to this point has assumed you're sitting at the machine running Ollama and Open WebUI, typing into localhost. That's fine for setup, but it's not how anyone actually wants to use a chat interface day to day.

You want it from the couch, from bed, from your laptop in another room.

The good news: Open WebUI is already listening on your machine's network address, not just localhost, from the moment you installed it. Nothing extra needs to be installed - you just need to know the right address and make sure your firewall isn't in the way.

Finding your local IP

On the machine running Open WebUI, find its address on your home network:

# Linux
hostname -I

# Mac
ipconfig getifaddr en0

On Windows, open Command Prompt and run ipconfig, then look for the "IPv4 Address" under your active network adapter. You're looking for something in the form 192.168.x.x or 10.0.x.x.

This address can change. Most home routers keep the same address for a device, but it's not guaranteed forever - a router restart or long time offline can shift it. If you're setting this up on a machine you'll come back to often, see the static IP tip in Going Headless.

Connecting from another device

From your phone or laptop, on the same Wi-Fi network, open a browser and go to:

http://192.168.1.XXX:3000

Replace the address with the actual IP you found, keeping :3000 on the end - that's the port Open WebUI listens on. You should see the same login screen and chat interface as on the host machine.

On mobile, add it to your home screen. Most browsers have an "Add to Home Screen" option that gives it its own icon and opens without browser chrome around it - close enough to feel like a real app.
Know what you're actually opening up: this makes your chat interface reachable by any device on your home network, not just yours - anyone else on the same Wi-Fi, including smart home devices and guests with the password, could reach it too if they knew the address. That's a reasonable trade for a home network you trust. See Locking Down Your Local AI Setup before doing the same thing for a network you don't fully control, or before going a step further and exposing anything to the internet.

What actually goes wrong

The page times out instead of loading

This is almost always a firewall blocking the port on the host machine, not a networking mistake. On Linux with UFW:

sudo ufw allow 3000/tcp

On Mac, check System Settings → Network → Firewall and confirm it isn't blocking incoming connections for Docker. On Windows, check Windows Defender Firewall's allowed apps list.

Your phone says it's connected to Wi-Fi but still can't reach it

Confirm both devices are actually on the same network, not just both on "Wi-Fi." Guest networks are commonly isolated from the main network by design, specifically so guest devices can't reach anything else on it - if your router has a separate guest SSID, connect your phone to the main one instead.

The IP address stopped working after a while

The machine's local IP likely changed after a router restart. Re-run the IP lookup command from above to get the current address, or set up a static IP reservation in your router settings so this stops happening.

Common questions

Does this expose my setup to the internet?
No. This only makes it reachable by devices already on your home Wi-Fi or network. Reaching it from outside your home network is a separate, much bigger step covered in Locking Down Your Local AI Setup.
Why does my phone say it can't connect even though I typed the right IP?
The most common cause is being on a different network - guest Wi-Fi networks are often isolated from the main network on purpose, so a phone on guest Wi-Fi can't reach a machine on the main network even though both say "connected to Wi-Fi."

Go deeper

This guide covers reaching your setup from your own home network. Here's where to go if you want something different.

Locking Down Your Local AI Setup Read this before going any further than your own home network - what actually matters once something is reachable beyond just you. r/homelab A whole community built around making home-hosted services reachable the right way.

Written from hands-on security operations experience. More about this site →