Installing Letta Desktop

Letta Desktop bundles the Letta server and ADE into a single local application. When running, it provides full access to the Letta API at https://localhost:8283.

Download Letta Desktop

• Mac (Apple Silicon)
• Windows (x64)
• Linux (x64)

Note: Since version 0.8.9, Letta uses sqlite as the embedded DB. If you wish to continue using Postgres, migrate your data and use the external Postgres support.

Configuration Modes

Letta Desktop can run in two primary modes:

1. Embedded Server Mode (Default)

This is the default mode where Letta Desktop runs its own embedded server with a SQLite database. No additional setup is required - just install and run!

To manually configure embedded mode, create or edit ~/.letta/desktop_config.json:

{
  "version": "1",
  "databaseConfig": {
    "type": "embedded",
    "embeddedType": "sqlite"
  }
}

2. Self-Hosted Server Mode

Connect Letta Desktop to your own self-hosted Letta server. This is useful for teams or when you want more control over your server infrastructure.

To configure self-hosted mode, create or edit ~/.letta/desktop_config.json:

{
  "version": "1",
  "databaseConfig": {
    "type": "local",
    "url": "https://api.letta.com",
    "token": "your-auth-token"
  }
}

Replace url with your server’s address and token with your authentication token if required.

Embedded Server with PostgreSQL (Deprecated)

This mode is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. We recommend using SQLite for embedded deployments or connecting to an external PostgreSQL instance for production use.

For backwards compatibility, you can still run the embedded server with PostgreSQL:

{
  "version": "1",
  "databaseConfig": {
    "type": "embedded",
    "embeddedType": "pgserver"
  }
}

Adding LLM backends

The Letta server can be connected to various LLM API backends. You can add additional LLM API backends by opening the integrations panel (clicking the icon). When you configure a new integration (by setting the environment variable in the dialog), the Letta server will be restarted to load the new LLM API backend.

You can also edit the environment variable file directly, located at ~/.letta/env.

For this quickstart demo, we’ll add an OpenAI API key (once we enter our key and click confirm, the Letta server will automatically restart):

Beta Status

Letta Desktop is currently in beta. View known issues and FAQ here.

For a more stable development experience, we recommend installing Letta via Docker.

Support

For bug reports and feature requests, contact us on Discord.