Essential Ollama Commands Every Beginner Should Know

Post 2 days ago - 03 Jun 2026 | Updated 03 Jun 2026 | 47

Introduction

Till now we understand what is ollama, how ollama works and how to run different AI models. But for practical use it is not sufficient to only know about running the model, we also have to know about download, manage, check and delete models. The different commands which are important to know about are:

ollama run:

This is the most important command of ollama. This command is use to run any AI model in ollama.

example:-

ollama run llama 3

when you run this command ollama check is the model already downloaded or not, if the model is not downloaded in the system this command automatically download the model and the launch in local system.

ollama pull:

If you only want to download the AI models but don't want to run the models then only pull command is used.

example:-

ollama pull llama 3

This command only download the model but don't launch the chat session. This command is useful if you want to install multiple models.

ollama list:

when you want to list multiple models which are installed in your local system we use this list command.

example:-

ollama list

ollama ps:

this command shows currently running status of the AI model.

example:-

ollama ps

suppose you used the llama 3 model then the result could be generate as

NAME
llama 3

ps= Process Status

ollama show:

If you want to see any model details then you can use this command.

example:-

ollama show llama 3

this will show the information about llama 3 model.

Model name
Size
Parameter, etc.

This can be useful for comparing different AI models.

ollama rm:

if the model is consuming more storage and you want to delete the model you can use this ollama command.

example:-

ollama rm llama 3

this command remove the AI model from the local system.

ollama --version:

this command is used to check the current version of the AI model.

ollam --version