Search or chat not working

The first question after starting Selv is slow

That's expected, not broken. Selv loads its model into memory on first use — you'll see "Waking up…" or "the first question takes the longest" while it does. After that, answers come back at normal speed until Selv has been idle long enough to unload the model again.

Models still downloading

If Selv hasn't finished downloading its local models yet, it shows a dedicated download screen before search or chat is usable at all — a one-time download of a few gigabytes. Let it finish, or retry if a download failed.

"AI search unavailable" or "AI search failed"

Selv shows this plainly, with a way back to search, rather than pretending an answer was possible. If it persists after restarting Selv, email support@selv.io with your macOS version and what you asked.

Answers seem to slow down over time

Under heavy memory pressure elsewhere on your Mac, Selv can free its loaded model to make room — the next question then pays the "waking up" cost again. Closing memory-hungry apps usually restores normal speed.

A brand-new install with nothing to answer from

If Selv has nothing captured yet, it says so on the search screen rather than returning an empty-feeling result — see First-run setup for what to expect while it catches up.