Getting a Proper Chat Interface Running

Why a web interface, not just the terminal

If you followed the mini PC setup guide, you already have a model running - but only inside a terminal window, one line at a time, with no history you can scroll back through and no easy way to switch models mid-conversation. That's fine for confirming everything works. It's not how anyone wants to actually use this day to day.

Open WebUI is a self-hosted interface that looks and feels like ChatGPT - a proper chat window, saved conversation history, the ability to switch models from a dropdown, even support for uploading images and documents depending on the model. It runs entirely on your machine and talks to Ollama in the background. Nothing about your conversations leaves your network.

Installing Docker

Open WebUI runs inside Docker, a tool that packages an application with everything it needs so it runs the same way on any machine. You don't need to understand how Docker works to use it here - just install it and run one command.

Download Docker Desktop for your operating system from docker.com, install it like any other application, and open it once so the background service starts. You'll see a small whale icon in your menu bar or system tray when it's running.

Installing Open WebUI

With Docker running, open a terminal and run this single command:

docker run -d -p 3000:8080 --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway -v open-webui:/app/backend/data --name open-webui --restart always ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main

Here's what that's actually doing, briefly: it downloads the Open WebUI application, connects it to the Ollama already running on your machine, and sets it to start automatically whenever your mini PC restarts. The first run will take a few minutes to download - that's normal.

Once it finishes, open a browser and go to:

http://localhost:3000

Create an account on the first-run screen. This account lives only on your machine - it's not sent anywhere, it just keeps your chat history separated if more than one person uses this setup.

Your first real chat

Pick a model from the dropdown at the top of the screen - if you followed the mini PC guide, llama3.2 will already be there. Type a message like you would in any chat app.

This is the moment the whole setup starts to feel real: a genuine chat interface, running entirely on hardware sitting in your house, with nothing going out to a company's servers.

What actually goes wrong

The page at localhost:3000 won't load

Confirm the container is actually running:

docker ps

You should see open-webui in the list. If it's not there, Docker Desktop likely wasn't running when you ran the install command - start Docker Desktop and run the same docker run command again.

Open WebUI loads, but no models show up

This almost always means Open WebUI can't reach Ollama. Confirm Ollama itself is running with ollama ps in a terminal outside of Docker. If Ollama is running but Open WebUI still can't see it, restart the container:

docker restart open-webui

Port 3000 is already in use

Something else on your machine is using that port. Change the first number in the original command - for example -p 3001:8080 - and access it at localhost:3001 instead.

Common questions