LM Studio just shipped its first official mobile app. Locally, the iOS chat app the company acquired earlier this year, is now the mainline LM Studio client for iPhone and iPad, and it ships with a feature called LM Link that lets your phone reach back into the desktop machine running your real models.

The pitch is simple. You probably have a Mac or workstation at home that can comfortably run a 30B parameter model. You also have a phone. Locally with LM Link stitches them together so the phone behaves like a thin client for the big box on your desk.

What LM Link actually does

LM Link is a feature in LM Studio that lets you connect together devices on which you have LM Studio (or llmster) installed. It is end-to-end encrypted, and built on top of custom Tailscale mesh VPNs. All devices in the LM Link network communicate with each other using a mesh VPN connection powered by Tailscale, using end-to-end encrypted connections without opening any ports to the internet. LM Link also runs entirely in userspace and does not change any global settings on your device.

The privacy story is the main reason this works at all for a local-AI crowd. LM Studio says chats remain on the local device and nothing gets uploaded to LM Studio's backend servers apart from your device list, which is used for discovery. Your conversations and the model weights themselves never round-trip through a third party.