Ollama models taking up space on Mac: how to delete them

What it is

Ollama stores models as content-addressed blobs (layers for the weights, template and parameters) plus small manifest files that list which blobs make up each model. The location is ~/.ollama/models unless you've set OLLAMA_MODELS.

Why it gets so big

Model weights are big, and trying several models, sizes or quantizations multiplies that. Layers from interrupted or removed pulls can also linger as blobs that no manifest points to.

Is it safe to delete?

Review it model by model. Anything pulled from a registry can be pulled again, at the cost of a large download, but models you built yourself from a Modelfile need rebuilding. Because models can share layers, removing one frees only the layers no other model uses. Quit the Ollama app or server first, and remove models through Ollama rather than deleting blob files by hand, so the manifests stay consistent.

Tip

Setting OLLAMA_MODELS lets you keep models on an external drive instead of your internal disk.