Where Ollama Stores Models and How to Move Them with OLLAMA_MODELS

By Web Asset House Studio · October 29, 2026

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How we wrote this: A plain-English summary of Ollama's official documentation (FAQ, Linux and Windows pages), checked October 29, 2026. Paths can change between versions; check the docs for your release.

Default model folders

Models take up a lot of disk space. According to Ollama's FAQ, they live here by default:

On Windows, %HOMEPATH%\.ollama holds both models and configuration.

Moving them to another drive

Set the OLLAMA_MODELS environment variable to the folder you want, then restart Ollama.

macOS (the app):

launchctl setenv OLLAMA_MODELS "/Volumes/External/ollama-models"

Then restart the Ollama app.

Linux (systemd service):

1. Run systemctl edit ollama.service.
2. Under [Service], add Environment="OLLAMA_MODELS=/data/ollama-models".
3. Run systemctl daemon-reload and systemctl restart ollama.
4. With the standard installer, the ollama user needs read and write access to the new folder: sudo chown -R ollama:ollama /data/ollama-models.

Windows:

1. Quit Ollama from the taskbar.
2. In Settings (Windows 11) or Control Panel (Windows 10), search for environment variables and choose Edit environment variables for your account.
3. Add OLLAMA_MODELS with the new path.
4. Start Ollama again from the Start menu.

The example folder paths above are placeholders; use your own.

Good to know

• If you change OLLAMA_MODELS on Windows, the uninstaller won't remove models stored there. See uninstalling Ollama.
• Use the model memory calculator to estimate how big a model is before you pull it.

Related: Ollama on Linux, Ollama on Windows, Ollama on a Mac, CLI cheat sheet.

Sources

• Ollama docs: FAQ
• Ollama docs: Windows