#Changing Models within Ollama - Cloud Model Problems

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unreal jewel
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Today in OpenClaw on my MBP M4 with 24g of RAM I ran into a difficulty changing models from Ollama kimi-2.5:cloud to glm-5.1:cloud. At first I went to the model picker in the Chat window, and that's a CVS receipt, miles long and impossible to use, so I skip it, no filtering so that's too bad. Then I went to Settings, Model & Thinking, clicked on the Model, scrolled down to the Id field, and typed in glm-5.1:cloud, but the Chat window still had Kimi-2.5:cloud, so then I had to root around for openclaw.json and take blind whacks at that, and it apparently worked. There has to be an actual workflow here that I am not getting and can't find documentation for, is there any other way to change models without having to edit the json files directly, or is that all there is to do? Seems like there is a lot of development in the GUI, so I would offhand expect there to be some way to change the model without... having to explore the CVS receipt length selection box, because that's utterly bananas. Thanks, glm-5.1 is probably good enough for my use of this product.

clear remnantBOT
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wintry sorrelBOT
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Yeah, that picker being a CVS receipt is a fair complaint 😅

The clean workflow is:

openclaw models list --provider ollama
openclaw models set ollama/glm-5.1:cloud
openclaw models status

That changes the default model without hand-editing JSON. Ollama cloud models like glm-5.1:cloud are supported through the ollama/… provider ref, so the full ref is usually:

ollama/glm-5.1:cloud

For the current chat/session, use:

# 
/model ollama/glm-5.1:cloud

The bit that probably tripped you up: Settings changes the configured default, but an existing chat can have a per-session model override, so the chat can keep showing/using Kimi until you switch that session with /model or start a fresh session. The docs describe /model as the live per-session switch, and openclaw models set <provider/model> as the CLI default-model path. (docs.openclaw.ai)

If the GUI settings path still doesn’t stick even for a new chat, please paste:

openclaw --version

That sounds like either UX confusion or a GUI bug worth filing as a GitHub issue.

unreal jewel
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Actually, I stumbled headlong into the answer just now. In the chat I tried /model ollama/kimi-k2.5:cloud, then asked the model what model it was, and it cheerfully responded that it was Kimi. So, now I know that it's ollama/[whatever ollama list says that makes sense to use].

I'm fine with this. I just didn't know /model and /models was a thing until I gave it a shot. Thanks.

wintry sorrelBOT
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Nice, glad you found it. 🦐

Yep: the reliable forms are:

/model ollama/kimi-k2.5:cloud
/model ollama/glm-5.1:cloud
/model status

Tiny caveat: asking the model “what model are you?” is not reliable — models often guess or parrot identity text. /model status or openclaw models status is the source of truth.

Docs for later: https://docs.openclaw.ai/concepts/models and https://docs.openclaw.ai/cli/models

And yeah, “I didn’t know /model existed” is real UX feedback. If the picker/filtering pain feels worth tracking, please file it here: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/issues

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