Gemma 4 12B

About

Google designed it to bring AI that works with pictures and sound onto laptops. It sits between Google's smaller E4B model and its larger 26B model in the Gemma 4 family. It can read PDFs, charts and screenshots, and turn speech into text in other languages.

How it compares

Of the 7 chat models Outmake recommends for a 16 GB Mac, it was the most downloaded on Hugging Face last month.

Of the 7 chat models Outmake recommends for a 16 GB Mac, Outmake estimates it is the 3rd fastest.

On a 16 GB Mac, Outmake estimates Qwen3.5 4B writes about 1.5 times as fast, and both read pictures.

Limitations

It can give wrong or outdated facts, and its training stops in January 2025.

It may miss sarcasm, subtle nuance or figurative language.

Good to know

It is Google's first mid-sized Gemma model that takes audio directly.

It was trained on more than 140 languages and supports over 35 out of the box.

Sources: google/gemma-4-12B-it model card, Introducing Gemma 4 12B, Outmake's speed estimates, LM Arena and Hugging Face. Every line comes from one of these.

Run It Anywhere

Gemma 4 12B is an open model, so any app that runs GGUF files can run it. These take the Q4_K_M size from unsloth straight from Hugging Face.

• LM StudioMac, Windows, LinuxOpen
• JanMac, Windows, LinuxOpen
• MstyMac, Windows, LinuxOpen
• OllamaMac, Windows, Linuxollama run hf.co/unsloth/gemma-4-12b-it-GGUF:Q4_K_MCopy
• llama.cppMac, Windows, Linuxllama-server -hf unsloth/gemma-4-12b-it-GGUF:Q4_K_MCopy
• Docker Model RunnerMac, Windows, Linuxdocker model run hf.co/unsloth/gemma-4-12b-it-GGUF:Q4_K_MCopy