Widgets, Shortcuts and Siri for Local AI
TL;DR: Widgets, Shortcuts and Siri let you use LM Mini and your local AI without opening the app first. Put your recent chats or a Persona on the Home Screen, ask a question out loud, or run one of the ready-made Shortcuts. Siri and Shortcuts are iPhone only, the widgets are on Android too.
Last post the AI learned to remember me. This one is about getting to it faster, because the slowest part of any chat is still finding the app and opening it.
Most of my questions do not show up when I am sitting comfortably with the phone in my hand. They show up when I am cooking, or walking, or one of the kids has my other hand, and by the time I have unlocked the phone and found the right chat, half the question is gone. So I wanted a few doors into LM Mini that do not go through the front.
Widgets are the door I actually use. One sits on my Home Screen with my recent chats, so I tap the one I was in and I am back in the middle of it. Another one holds Personas, so I can tap a character and start talking to that one directly, without any menus on the way. Both are in the free app. On Pro there is one more, LM News, where you write your own prompt and a short list of headlines sits on the widget waiting for you, which is a strange and wonderful thing to find next to the weather.
Shortcuts are for the people who like to build things (you know who you are). A Shortcut can ask LM Mini the question for you and hand the answer back, and there is a whole page of them at lmmini.com/shortcuts. Summarize the article you are reading, clean up an email before you send it, translate whatever you just copied, or turn what is left in the fridge into a recipe. You add the ones you like and ignore the rest.
Then there is Siri, where I ask LM Mini a question out loud and hear the answer read back, without touching the phone at all. With LM Studio at home it answers right there in Siri. With an on-device model, LM Mini pops open to do the thinking, and the answer still never leaves the phone, which still feels a little like getting away with something.
You can put LM Mini on the Action Button too. I have not, mine still does nothing at all, which probably says more about me than about the button.
Siri and Shortcuts are iPhone only, and I know that. Android friends, you do get the widgets, recent chats and Personas right on your Home Screen, and I have not forgotten you on the rest.
Next post is phone and Mac sync, starting a chat on the phone and finishing it at the desk. Until then, put a widget on your Home Screen and count how many times you tap it.
Get LM Mini: lmmini.com