TextGen (text-generation-webui) Becomes Native Desktop App with Portable Builds

TextGen (formerly text-generation-webui, also known as oobabooga) has released a native desktop app version. The project, in development since December 2022, now offers portable builds — just download, unzip, and double-click textgen. No installation or files outside the extracted folder. All chat histories and settings live in a bundled user_data folder.

Key Features

• Privacy: Zero outbound requests. Unlike LM Studio, it does not phone home with OS, CPU, app version, or backend choices.
• ik_llama.cpp builds: Ships custom quant types like IQ4_KS and IQ5_KS for better accuracy vs vanilla llama.cpp used by LM Studio and Ollama.
• Built-in web search: Uses ddgs Python library. Two modes: tool-calling with the web_search tool (works with Qwen 3.6 and Gemma 4) or a checkbox that fetches search results as text attachments.
• Tool-calling: Supports single-file .py tools (easy custom functions), HTTP MCP servers, and stdio MCP servers. Option to require approve/reject confirmation before executing tool calls. Guide here.
• Custom characters: Create characters for casual chats alongside instruction-following conversations.
• API compatibility: OpenAI and Anthropic spec-compliant API. Works with Claude Code: ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:5000 claude.
• PDF extraction: Uses PyMuPDF for accurate text extraction.
• Web page fetching: Uses trafilatura to strip navigation/boilerplate, saving tokens in agentic loops.
• Jinja2 templates: Renders chat templates via Python Jinja2, avoiding crashes in llama.cpp's C++ jinja reimplementation.

Available Builds

CUDA, Vulkan, CPU-only, Mac (Apple Silicon and Intel), and ROCm. All portable.

License: AGPLv3. Source: https://github.com/oobabooga/textgen