diff --git a/opf/_cli/common.py b/opf/_cli/common.py
index 31224e1..6852af6 100644
--- a/opf/_cli/common.py
+++ b/opf/_cli/common.py
@@ -55,11 +55,20 @@ def add_device_arg(parser: object) -> None:
     parser.add_argument(
         "--device",
         type=str,
-        default="cuda",
-        help="Device to run on",
+        default="auto",
+        help="Device to run on. 'auto' picks cuda if available, else cpu.",
     )
 
 
+def resolve_device(name: str) -> str:
+    """Resolve an ``auto`` device selection to a concrete torch device name."""
+    if name != "auto":
+        return name
+    import torch
+
+    return "cuda" if torch.cuda.is_available() else "cpu"
+
+
 def add_n_ctx_arg(parser: object) -> None:
     """Add the shared context-window override argument."""
     parser.add_argument(
diff --git a/opf/_cli/render.py b/opf/_cli/render.py
index 784b543..1d8f6ff 100644
--- a/opf/_cli/render.py
+++ b/opf/_cli/render.py
@@ -111,12 +111,13 @@ def build_redactor_from_args(
 ):
     """Construct an ``OPF`` redactor from parsed CLI arguments."""
     from .._api import OPF
+    from .common import resolve_device
 
     redactor = OPF(
         model=args.checkpoint,
         context_window_length=args.n_ctx,
         trim_whitespace=args.trim_span_whitespace,
-        device=args.device,
+        device=resolve_device(args.device),
         output_mode=args.output_mode,
         discard_overlapping_predicted_spans=args.discard_overlapping_predicted_spans,
         output_text_only=output_text_only,
diff --git a/opf/_common/checkpoint_download.py b/opf/_common/checkpoint_download.py
index 743f889..89c643e 100644
--- a/opf/_common/checkpoint_download.py
+++ b/opf/_common/checkpoint_download.py
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ def _reset_terminal_after_download() -> None:
 
 
 def _build_download_progress_class():
-    from tqdm.auto import tqdm
+    from huggingface_hub.utils import tqdm
 
     class OpfDownloadTqdm(tqdm):
         """Flush HuggingFace's final progress footer before OPF resumes output."""
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index c27d87a..cbcbc81 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ description = "Standalone local-only OPF PyTorch model and eval tools."
 readme = "README.md"
 requires-python = ">=3.10"
 dependencies = [
-  "huggingface_hub",
+  "huggingface_hub>=0.20",
   "numpy",
   "packaging",
   "torch",