Using the LM Studio Command Line Interface (CLI)
While the LM Studio UI application is convenient to use for chatting, using LM Studio as a RAG system, etc., the command line interface is also useful because a command line interface (CLI) is often a much faster way to get work done.
You can refer to the official documentation https://lmstudio.ai/docs/cli. Here we will look at a few examples:
lms ls
1 $ lms ls
2
3 You have 6 models, taking up 42.23 GB of disk space.
4
5 LLMs (Large Language Models) PARAMS ARCHITECTURE SIZE
6 qwen3moe 13.29 GB
7 qwen3-30b-a3b-instruct-2507-mlx qwen3_moe 17.19 GB
8 qwen/qwen3-30b-a3b-2507 qwen3_moe 17.19 GB
9 google/gemma-3n-e4b gemma3n 5.86 GB ✓ LOADED
10 liquid/lfm2-1.2b lfm2 1.25 GB
11
12 Embedding Models PARAMS ARCHITECTURE SIZE
13 text-embedding-nomic-embed-text-v1.5 Nomic BERT 84.11 MB
lms load <model_key>
A model key is the first item displayed on an output line when you run llm ls.
1 $ lms load google/gemma-3n-e4b
2
3 Loading model "google/gemma-3n-e4b"...
4 Model loaded successfully in 13.59s. (5.86 GB)
5 To use the model in the API/SDK, use the identifier "google/gemma-3n-e4b:2".
6 To set a custom identifier, use the --identifier <identifier> option.
lms unload
lms unload takes an optional <model_key>. If you don’t specify a model key then you will be shown a list of loaded models and you can interactively unload models:
1 $ lms unload
2
3 ! Use the arrow keys to navigate, type to filter, and press enter to select.
4 ! To unload all models, use the --all flag.
5
6 ? Select a model to unload | Type to filter...
7 qwen3-30b-a3b-instruct-2507-mlx
8 ❯ google/gemma-3n-e4b
lms get
lms get supports searching for models on Huggingface by name and interactively downloading them. Here is an example:
1 $ lms get llama-3.2 --mlx --gguf --limit 6
2 Searching for models with the term llama-3.2
3 No exact match found. Please choose a model from the list below.
4
5 ! Use the arrow keys to navigate, and press enter to select.
6
7 ? Select a model to download (Use arrow keys)
8 ❯ [Staff Pick] Hermes 3 Llama 3.2 3B
9 [Staff Pick] Llama 3.2 1B Instruct 4bit
10 [Staff Pick] Llama 3.2 3B Instruct 4bit
11 [Staff Pick] Llama 3.2 1B
12 [Staff Pick] Llama 3.2 3B
13 DavidAU/Llama-3.2-8X3B-MOE-Dark-Champion-Instruct-uncensored-abliterated-18.4B-GGUF
Server Status and Control
1 $ lms server status
2 The server is running on port 1234.
3 Marks-Mac-mini:api_introduction $ lms server stop
4 Stopped the server on port 1234.
5 Marks-Mac-mini:api_introduction $ lms server start
6 Starting server...
7 Success! Server is now running on port 1234
8 Marks-Mac-mini:api_introduction $ lms ps
9
10 LOADED MODELS
11
12 Identifier: google/gemma-3n-e4b
13 • Type: LLM
14 • Path: google/gemma-3n-e4b
15 • Size: 5.86 GB
16 • Architecture: gemma3n