What Happens to Your Data in a Local AI Setup

Where your data actually lives

"Local" gets used loosely sometimes, so it's worth being precise about where things actually sit on disk. Two categories matter: the models themselves, and your conversation history.

Models pulled with Ollama live in a models directory on disk - typically ~/.ollama/models on Linux and Mac. That's just the model weights, the same files whether you've had one conversation with a model or a thousand.

Your actual chat history is separate, stored by Open WebUI in its own local database - by default, a SQLite file inside its data directory (or a Docker volume, if you ran it in a container). Nothing about your conversations is mixed into the model files themselves.

Confirming nothing leaves your network

A default Ollama plus Open WebUI setup makes no outbound calls related to your conversations. It doesn't phone home, doesn't sync anywhere, doesn't need an account. If you want to confirm that yourself rather than take it on faith, that's a reasonable instinct - here's how.

With a chat open, watch your network activity while you send a message. On Linux or Mac:

sudo nettop -m process

Or use your router's device activity view, if it shows per-device traffic. You're looking for one thing: does anything go out at the moment you hit send? On a stock local setup, the answer is nothing does.

Cleaning up and full reset

To remove a model you're no longer using and free its disk space:

ollama list
ollama rm <model-name>

To clear your chat history, do it inside Open WebUI itself - under Settings, there's an option to delete individual conversations or wipe all chat history at once. This does not touch your installed models; the two are managed independently.

For a genuine full reset - as if you'd never installed anything - you'd remove the Ollama models directory, uninstall Ollama, and delete Open WebUI's data directory (or the Docker volume, if that's how you ran it). At that point nothing local-AI-related remains on the machine.

What actually goes wrong

Disk space doesn't free up after removing a model

Confirm the removal actually completed with ollama list - if the model is still listed, the rm command may have failed silently due to the model being in use. Stop any running instance first, then remove it again.

Chat history is still there after what felt like a reset

This almost always means only the models were removed, not Open WebUI's own data. Since the two are stored independently, clearing one never touches the other - you have to clear chat history from within Open WebUI's own settings specifically.

You ran Open WebUI in Docker and can't find the data anywhere

Docker containers store data in named volumes by default, not in an obvious folder in your home directory. List volumes with docker volume ls to find where Open WebUI actually persisted its database.

Common questions