Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-4bit

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-4bit

A 4-bit MLX conversion of Qwen3.6-35B-A3B that answers text and image prompts on Apple Silicon Macs. Made for people who want to run this Qwen model locally with mlx-vlm.

Made by mlx-community on Hugging Face. These notes are Mindket's, written from its model page and model card; the model's own files and license are on Hugging Face.

About

What it is: This is a 4-bit MLX copy of Qwen's Qwen3.6-35B-A3B, converted with mlx-vlm version 0.4.4. It reads text and images and replies in text. The model has 35.1B parameters in the record. The card is short and sends you to the original Qwen model card for details.

Who it suits: It suits developers and tinkerers with an Apple Silicon Mac who want to try a large Qwen model on their own machine, with no cloud service.

Industry | Who uses it | How they use it | Example
Software | Developers | Run a local model for text and image prompts | Describing a screenshot from the terminal
Design and media | Creators | Get quick image descriptions offline | Captioning a photo
Education | Students | Experiment with a large model on a Mac | Comparing replies at different settings
Research | ML hobbyists | Test an MLX 4-bit conversion | Checking output against the original model

Skip it if you are not on Apple Silicon, since this is an MLX format copy.

Where to use it:

• Apple Silicon Macs, through the mlx-vlm package
• The terminal, with one command per prompt
• Image description and text prompts

Use case | Who | What they get back
Describe an image | Creators | A written description of the picture
Text prompts | Developers | A text reply from the model

How to set it up:

• An Apple Silicon Mac
• Python, with the mlx-vlm package
• Plenty of disk space, since the record lists about 140 GB of weights in U32

1. Install mlx-vlm.
2. Run the generate command with the model name.
3. Add an image path when you want a picture described.

pip install -U mlx-vlm

pip install -U huggingface_hub
hf download mlx-community/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-4bit

How to use it: You run the mlx_vlm generate module with the model name, a token limit, a temperature, a prompt and an image path. The card shows one command for describing an image.

python -m mlx_vlm.generate --model mlx-community/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-4bit --max-tokens 100 --temperature 0.0 --prompt "Describe this image." --image <path_to_image>

Option | What it does
--model | Names the model to load
--max-tokens | Limits how long the reply can be
--temperature | Sets how varied the reply is
--prompt | Holds your instruction
--image | Attaches the picture to describe

Example: You point the command at a photo and the prompt "Describe this image." with a limit of 100 tokens. The model prints a short description of what is in the picture.

For newcomers and experts: Think of this as a large model packed into a smaller file for Apple chips. A good first try is the card's describe command on one of your own photos.

If you know the field, this is a conversion rather than new training, done with mlx-vlm 0.4.4 at 4 bits. The card gives no further detail on the base model, quantization method or benchmarks, so read the original Qwen card for those.

Install mlx-vlm
Run the generate command
Model reads the prompt and image
Description prints in the terminal

Good to know:

• Source: converted from Qwen3.6-35B-A3B, so check that card for the model's details.
• Detail: this card has no benchmarks or quality notes.
• License: Apache 2.0.
• Cost to run: none named.
• Data it reaches: it downloads model files from Hugging Face and works on the prompts and images you give it.
• Not for: machines without Apple Silicon.

On Hugging Face, 13 November 2026

• Task: image text to text
• Library: mlx
• Parameters: 35.1B
• Weights: about 140 GB in U32
• Formats: Safetensors
• Downloads in the last 30 days: 33,952
• Likes: 124
• License: apache-2.0
• Based on: Qwen/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
• Quantized versions: 6
• Tags: safetensors, qwen3_5_moe, image-text-to-text, conversational, 4-bit

Links

• Model: https://huggingface.co/mlx-community/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-4bit
• Files: https://huggingface.co/mlx-community/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-4bit/tree/main

Get the model

Download its files with Hugging Face's command line:

pip install -U huggingface_hub
hf download mlx-community/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-4bit

Then follow the usage in its model card. Nothing in this kit runs by itself.