Keeping Everything Updated

Why bother updating

Once this is running well, it's tempting to never touch it again - and for the model itself, that's mostly fine, nothing breaks by leaving a version alone. But this is also a piece of software running continuously on your network, and like anything in that position, security fixes land in updates. Combine that with genuine capability improvements in newer model versions, and a little periodic maintenance is worth the ten minutes it takes.

This isn't a "check daily" situation. It's closer to updating a router's firmware - infrequent, low-effort, and worth doing when you think of it.

Updating Ollama and models

On Linux, re-running the same install command updates an existing install in place:

curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh

On Mac, the Ollama app checks for updates automatically and prompts you when one's available. On Windows, re-download and run the installer the same way you did the first time.

Models update the same simple way - pull the tag again:

ollama pull llama3.2

If nothing changed since you last pulled it, this finishes almost instantly since there's nothing new to download. If a newer version exists under that tag, only the changed layers are downloaded, not the whole model from scratch.

Updating Open WebUI

Pull the newer image, then recreate the container:

docker pull ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main
docker stop open-webui
docker rm open-webui

Then run the exact same install command from Getting a Proper Chat Interface Running again. Because your chat history lives in a separate Docker volume, not inside the container itself, removing and recreating the container this way doesn't touch your data.

What actually goes wrong

Ollama update seems to install but nothing changes

The service usually needs an explicit restart to pick up the new version. On Linux:

sudo systemctl restart ollama

On Mac, quit and reopen the Ollama app from the menu bar.

Chat history disappeared after updating Open WebUI

This almost always means the container was removed with docker rm -v instead of a plain docker rm, deleting the data volume along with the container. If you have a separate backup of the volume (see Backing Up Your Local AI Setup), restore from that. Otherwise, unfortunately, that history is gone - which is exactly why the warning above matters.

A custom model built with a Modelfile stopped acting the way it used to

Custom models built with ollama create pin to the base model version that existed at the moment you built them - they don't automatically pick up a newer base model just because you pulled one. If you want a custom model to reflect an updated base, rebuild it: run the same ollama create command from Giving Your AI Memory again after pulling the new base version.

Common questions