The Gemini app is now on Mac

Posted by thm 1 day ago

Comments

Comment by linzhangrun 1 day ago

I feel that software like this, which has the same functionality as the web version rather than leveraging the client's advantages to do things the web cannot, is not very meaningful

Comment by nomorewords 1 day ago

It's about app-ifying the desktop. Instead of opening a browser, then remembering that you have a bookmark and clicking it or googling the site you are looking for, the idea is to have a step less and just click something on your desktop or taskbar (like on a mobile device)

Comment by jbverschoor 2 hours ago

Sure, but these apps are slower, take longer to start, and don’t handle multiple windows.

The browser experience is 10x better

Comment by tgv 1 day ago

And to circumvent browser plugins.

Comment by solarkraft 1 day ago

As long as installing web apps to desktop with real app UX sucks horribly, we will remain needing this.

Comment by chakintosh 1 day ago

First thing I tried to find on that webpage is whether I can run Gemma models on the app with inference on-device. Apparently you can't.

Comment by originalvichy 1 day ago

I wonder if they will finally let you use past chats without having to turn on the data sharing, since it’s possible to store chat context on disk. (No chance).

Comment by anon373839 1 day ago

It was always possible to store it in the browser’s localStorage, so…

Comment by tekacs 1 day ago

It wasn't even the local-ness so much. Even if they stored at remotely it would be okay like ChatGPT or Claude but unlike the others for a long time the only way to let it store history on their servers was also allowing them to train on it. I haven't checked if it's changed.

Comment by teekert 1 day ago

Google does not let you store your home and work address without storing everywhere you go on Google Maps. So indeed, no chance.

Comment by aldarisbm 1 day ago

it's not the best but I have a whole other account just for gemini. It's valuable to keep that context.

Comment by charcircuit 1 day ago

It still would need to go to the cloud so you can see the chat from another device logged in to the same user.

Comment by AM1010101 1 day ago

I've had the gemini web app in a safari embedded browser tab for 6+months its worked great as a local app. (M1 Pro base spec) I set Super + C set to open it.

First impressions of the native app: I think I will save RAM and it will be faster - Cool. Download, install, sign in - Easy. Change the keyboard shortcuts - Simple. cmd + N to open a new chat - better than cmd + shift + O in the web app.

Back to work, a few moments pass.

super + C - ... wait ... there is a noticable delay in opening the app?

Maybe try the new mini chat? - Same delay 800+ms?

Thats annoying, every other app on my mac switches instantly?

Why is this slow? The delay long enough that you break my flow and make me think spending the RAM is worth it for the old web version? Whats the point of native if its slow?

Second grip - the text layout is too wide to read comfortably. At least give me the option to put it in a more narrow layout. I use every app full screen so reading text across the full width of my screen is pretty awkward.

Anyway I'll give it a go and see if it grows on me but right now the web app feels more polished and responsive so I will likely switch back.

Edit: typos

Comment by HelloMcFly 1 day ago

The Windows app doesn't always (or even usually, in my experience) stay synced with the webapp, so I only use webapp now. Wondering if the same will be true for the Mac app.

Comment by toinewx 1 day ago

same experience here, way too slow compared to the web app

Comment by hk1337 1 day ago

Man, I’ve spent so many years now without google, I want to try it because I want to try different agents but I don’t really want to setup google on my MacBook.

Does this have console like Claude and codex?

---

I was able to install and use Gemini on macOS fine authentication worked. I had some issues authenticating with the cli app, some certificate issues.

Once I got past the certificate issues, now it will not let me use the cli code assist without verifying that I am 18+ but I can use the UI app just fine without the verification.

To verify, seems to require submitting a government issued ID or credit card.

No thanks. This kind of stuff is why I dropped google long ago.

Comment by NeutralWanted 1 day ago

The best by far IMO. gemini-cli

Comment by esperent 1 day ago

At least as of about 6 weeks ago, Gemini cli was a buggy mess. I ended up hitting bugs every 30-60 minutes that required completely resetting (clearing the cache, logging out and in) and then if I resumed an old chat the bug was back.

I saw a joke on Reddit: Anthropic doesn't let you use claude with 3rd party harnesses. Google doesn't even let you use Gemini with their own harness.

Comment by mapontosevenths 1 day ago

Gemini cli is literally the worse agentic cli tool that I've tried and Google won't let you use your credentials with any other.

It lacks obvious features that all the others have, crashes constantly, breaks so badly you lose work at least once a week, is seldom updated, and worse was recently crippled even further intentionally.

Google has had load issues forever. Their most recent solution has been to throttle CLI users to the point that it's almost useless. The only way to get decent service is to pay per query with the API now.

I cancelled my Ultra plan and went to ChatGPT. They still let you chose your preferred tool. Meanwhile, Googles forums and github are filled with wailing and gnashing of teeth, but Google customer service policy is the same as it was when they just did search: reproachful silence.

https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/discussions/2297...

Comment by mistercheese 1 day ago

Out of curiosity, why do you like gemini-cli better than claude or codex? And do you have any comparisons to opencode or pi?

Personally I've really liked OpenCode's TUI, but maybe on a superficial level of "this looks good and feels ergonomic to me".

Gemini cli felt clunky for me when I tried a while ago, but maybe it's better now? I do like how it's open source and I'm wondering if it can be made as model agnostic as OpenCode.

Comment by NeutralWanted 1 day ago

I don't really see or feel a difference in a lot of the the cli tooling, however, for development work Gemini is just hands down better. And I pay for ultra, and while that's not cheap, I know I can just use it however long I want for whatever I want and I'll never go past the price I pay unlike some API key only models.

Comment by theshrike79 2 hours ago

I don't trust gemini-cli.

It's the only one that consistently just starts breaking shit without prompting.

I'll give it something like "investigate this issue: <stack trace>" and tab out.

Then I come back and the motherfucker has rewritten half the codebase. This has happened MULTIPLE times.

Comment by mistercheese 21 hours ago

Nice! With Anthropic and OpenAI lowering usage limits that’s a big deal. I’ve been considering a Gemini subscription because I’m already paying for the Google storage plan and it would only be $10 a month more for me.

Do you use Gemini 3.1 pro or the flash model or just auto? Any feelings about quality vs other models?

Comment by asimovDev 1 day ago

I find it amusing or maybe even confusing that the developers seem to be changing the TUI look every month or so. Sometimes I go for 2 weeks without vibing cause I am working on something that doesn't involve coding or whatever and then I open gemini-cli only to be greeted with an update and a new UI

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by dzhiurgis 1 day ago

Yeah I've been google search free for few years now, but gemini feels like google's renaissance.

I used gemini for past few months as using Safari's add to dock feature. Been waiting for gemini app tho as web version is just so buggy.

Comment by shrx 1 day ago

Meanwhile, I still can't use Gemini as my Android Auto assistant.

Comment by BakeInBeens 1 day ago

It is widely rolled out now and not just in the US.

Comment by mavamaarten 1 day ago

Well good for you, but that doesn't change the fact that I can't use it. Everything is a mishmash of the old Assistant and Gemini. Sometimes even my Google Home answers in the old Assistant voice (you know... "Sorry, I don't understand"

Comment by phamilton 1 day ago

I just got it last week. Still a few quirks, but positive so far.

Comment by gonzalohm 1 day ago

Do you have an option to not use it? Google forcefully updated my TV and the normal assistant is gone now

Comment by neya 1 day ago

First thing I do after I purchase any smart TV - turn off network access, disable auto-updates (mine is a Sony). So, this way 1) it can collect whatever it wants but it can't phone back home and 2) I don't wake up one day and find myself on a learning curve I didn't sign up for (happened to me once, they completely re-did the UI, for worse!)

Comment by gonzalohm 1 day ago

How do you watch anything without network access?

Comment by neya 1 day ago

I use Apple TV and give it network access instead, this way the TV doesn't have the chance to update. My Apple TV is set to update manually too. Of course, the assumption here is Apple TV doesn't phone home - and I'm no Apple fanboy, but I think this is as close as we get to online streaming with privacy.

Comment by abosherid 1 day ago

Roku

Comment by 3vidence 1 day ago

It seems to forget about what I do and don't have access to (in terms of apps). I've had to remind it that I have Spotify and YT music more than once.

Other than that agreed going okay so far.

Comment by fg137 1 day ago

This.

Android feels like more of a liability than an asset to Google these days.

Comment by VectorLock 1 day ago

Can you use it as your CarPlay assistant?

Comment by antipaul 1 day ago

Seems like the most basic thing ever.

Can’t even use the new Gemma on device model… no model selection besides fast/normal/thinking.

Also requires Google login

Comment by solarkraft 1 day ago

Of course it requires a Google login. It’s an app for a Google service. That service is about Gemini, their strongest consumer model. Gemma is not much more than a tech demo.

Comment by verdverm 1 day ago

Google models are good, their products are all subpar

Comment by magicalhippo 1 day ago

I recently discovered you can lose chat history by switching between using Gemma web "app" and at least the Android version.

Simply start chat on web, head to couch and continue on phone, later go back to web and, crucially, do not refresh your browser, but resume chatting.

All that lovely stuff you chatted about on your phone will be gone from the chat...

Android app also loses anything you've typed but not submitted if the app is closed while in background. I guess kinda expected but also annoying if you get interrupted.

I also found Gemini oddly less accurate at web searches, and less willing to do them compared to ChatGPT. Working on an electronics project Gemini relied much more on innate, hence sometimes incorrect knowledge, while ChatGPT 4.5 went and verified datasheets and whatnot much more rigorously.

Comment by verdverm 23 hours ago

I wouldn't attribute that as much to the model as I would the tools, prompts, and app plumbing around them. This is where I find Google to be really lacking in comparison to Anthropic and my custom stack. I don't use OpenAI so cannot offer a comparison or opinion.

Comment by magicalhippo 21 hours ago

Right I meant the experience from the apps, since that was what OP talked about.

I couldn't even get the Gemini VSCode plugin to work so haven't tried that, just kept asking me to log in and saw others reporting the same.

So yeah...

Comment by dzhiurgis 1 day ago

Do you know anyone who is innovating beyond basic chat?

Yes there's Claude Code, but I just can't stand them with woke politics, limits, poor prompt adherence. ChatGPT has been ok, but mostly same chat window (with terrible model hallucination). At least in google's ai studio you can interrupt using keyboard.

Comment by verdverm 23 hours ago

Anthropic is out in front with their Desktop app (imo), I have to evaluate it for rollout at a client, latest update brought significant improvements. I find Claude and the soul thing to be annoying. I won't touch Sam Altman stuff, for similar economic / political reasons in the opposite direction. OpenAI is the most likely to fail too (imo) and rumor has it they have not had a successful pre training run since Ilya left, with the 5.x series being mid/late iterations on the unreleased 4.5

Personally, I built a full custom agent stack so I can have full control. There should be lots of options these days for beyond just chat. Search my HN or GitHub history if you want more details on my take.

Comment by nimchimpsky 1 day ago

[dead]

Comment by wallofwonder 1 day ago

However the app doesn't support the notebooks in Gemini web yet, which is very helpful for Gemini acting as a research assistant. Looking forward to its updates.

Comment by ChildOfChaos 1 day ago

I don’t even have that in Gemini web yet. They only released it last week and are doing a staged rollout.

Comment by michaericalribo 1 day ago

I've been clamoring for this for a year now, but I'm so accustomed to the web interface I think I'll wait until it's matured:

- Can't adjust font display size

- Can't open multiple chat windows at once

- Can't Cmd+F within a chat to find content

Hoping it succeeds, waiting until it does.

Comment by railka 1 day ago

[dead]

Comment by syntaxing 1 day ago

Any way to run this on Gemma 4 only? If there was a “local” mode, I would seriously think about installing this.

Comment by robot_jesus 1 day ago

Out of curiosity, why not just try it with one of the many local managers like LM Studio or Ollama or oMLX, etc?

The Gemini app is kind of terrible (apart from the models) but Gemma 4 runs great locally already.

Comment by syntaxing 1 day ago

I run lmstudio now and it’s more like a “chat” bot. Where as Gemini app is more like an agent.

Comment by tuzemec 1 day ago

You can enable the lm studio server and use any openai compatible harness to use the models that are running inside it. OpenCode, pi, even Claude and Codex...

Comment by solarkraft 1 day ago

I’ve been missing agentic capabilities from almost all local LLM apps. It’s like they’re all stuck in 2023.

That’s why I started using OpenCode for this. It works pretty well, the web UI comes pretty close to a general chat app. You can use folders to organize your sessions like projects (which annoyingly Gemini still doesn’t have) with files and extra instructions.

It’s pretty powerful.

Comment by adrian_b 1 day ago

OpenCode is one solution, but there are also several alternatives.

For example pi-dev, but even Codex is open source and it should work with any locally-hosted model, e.g. by using the OpenAI-compatible API provided by llama-server.

I have not used pi-dev until now, but the recent presentation of pi-dev by its developer (reported on other HN threads) has convinced me that he is among the people who can distinguish good from bad, which unfortunately cannot be said about many people creating AI applications.

So I intend to switch to using pi-dev as a coding assistant for my locally-hosted models, but I do not have yet results demonstrating that this is the right choice, besides its lead developer being more trustworthy than the others.

Comment by maz1b 1 day ago

Heard it's written in Swift for this native adaptation. That's a good sign.

Comment by mojuba 1 day ago

The binary is about 160MB, that's way too much for Swift. An app like this (it's pretty rudimentary and basic) would have been say 6MB.

Comment by saagarjha 1 day ago

It's native SwiftUI with Googleisms

Comment by samxli 1 day ago

I mean. It’s not that hard to write a wrapper for an LLM connector in Swift using coding agents. They probably used Claude.

Comment by decancode 1 day ago

Really hoping this will not strip off messages as it happens in iOS apps with long conversations over days.

Have been seeing that happen consistently where older chats have some messages missing in between

Comment by naskwo 1 day ago

It seems that I cannot paste screenshots into the Mac app, whereas this does work in Gemini running in the browser (Chrome).

Comment by exabrial 1 day ago

> The Gemini app is now available as a native macOS experience

Ok Google, this is well-earned. This is enough to make me try Gemini over Claude.

I'm so fed up with _fucking_ self-updating Electron apps. One day it's working, next day its not. I'd rather just have releases once it's confirmed working, and something I can roll back if it breaks. I have work to get done, and it's like rolling the dice right now every day.

Comment by nozzlegear 1 day ago

I'm so fed up with _fucking_ self-updating Electron apps.

Logging into Discord once a day and it opens and closes itself 3 times while that stupid logo spins and says it's fetching 1 out of 8 updates. What the hell. I actually hate Discord, I would migrate in a heartbeat if I didn't think it'd kill my WoW guild.

Comment by nnx 1 day ago

I ended up just using the web version, which is actually better than the native app (multiple tabs works!).

Comment by NeutralWanted 1 day ago

I've mentioned to my guild using mumble and irc (via The lounge) jokingly but secretly hoping they are as fed up as I am with discord.. it'll never happen sadly.

Comment by Flux159 1 day ago

I'm going to be honest - this is over a year late. I still use ChatGPT on Mac because it actually had a Mac App from May of 2024, whereas I had to go to the Gemini website to use Gemini. It was even worse because of the fragmented experience - there's been an iOS Gemini app for a while now. Integrating Gemini into Chrome is not the same experience as having a standalone app.

Now that it's at least here, hopefully Google can continue updating it instead of giving up on it if their metrics don't show as fast growth as iOS or Chrome usage.

Comment by klueinc 1 day ago

This doesn't even run on Sonoma.

Comment by 1Ecz3 1 day ago

still on the latest pixel phone - gemini can't read basic things.

Comment by anon84873628 1 day ago

Pixel OCR and translation has been fantastic for me.

Comment by sayYayToLife 1 day ago

[dead]

Comment by xnx 1 day ago

The amount of products and updates shipping from the AI-invigorated Google is mind-boggling.

They are leading or highly competitive in every AI segment: foundation model, open-weights model, video model, image model, world model, AI IDE, AI CLI, text-to-music, text-to-speech, etc. etc. etc.

Comment by straydusk 1 day ago

I'm about as AI-pilled as anyone. Stitch is the only Google powered AI product I use. How are they winning?

Comment by jsmo 1 day ago

Never heard of it, seems like a Wix / Canva knock-off?

Comment by khuey 1 day ago

Really? Right now both Claude Code and Codex seem substantially more capable than Gemini CLI to me.

Comment by comboy 1 day ago

Tried antigravity and cli a few times. I'm unable to handle that prodigious toddler. Are you guys able to make use of it?

Comment by NeutralWanted 1 day ago

Been using it for work and personal daily since release. First few weeks were rough but it's probably the best AI code editor out right now. But that's largely due to the models just be superior

Comment by sovietonion 1 day ago

[dead]

Comment by operatingthetan 1 day ago

CLI is great, probably 90% as good as CC.

Comment by girvo 1 day ago

Antigravity CLI or the Gemini one? When I tried the latter about 2 months ago it was shockingly bad, though I was a free user. I assume its better if you're a paying customer?

Comment by operatingthetan 1 day ago

It doesn't appear that there is an Antigravity CLI, so the ladder. I'm using a paid account though.

For the last few months I was using paid versions of CC, Codex and Gemini CLI, and found them more or less equivalent for my uses. I'm just building web apps though.

Comment by alxhslm 1 day ago

In my experience, it was fine for simple tasks - but CC was well ahead for anything which required substantial “thinking”.

Comment by nimchimpsky 1 day ago

[dead]

Comment by verdverm 1 day ago

Their "ai-invigorated" GCP UI has been degrading substantially. It's becoming unusable and slower than Jira (which has actually vastly improved over the last several years). It currently has an expanding state problem (we suspect) because a change in one part of the UI is not reflected in the validation of other fields. Even clearing browser cache does not fix the issues. At least the CLI still works, but that is largely trad machine generated from schemas.

Comment by andrewmcwatters 1 day ago

[dead]

Comment by bibimsz 16 hours ago

linux continues to get no love

Comment by sayYayToLife 1 day ago

[dead]

Comment by Apreche 1 day ago

How about making something we actually want, like a GMail app for mac.

Comment by kridsdale3 20 hours ago

Use Mimestream. It's wonderful and GMail-backend-only fully native Mac App by one of the former lead engineers of the Apple Mail app.

Comment by 46493168 1 day ago

What would that get you over just the chrome version?

Comment by zffr 1 day ago

It would be much snappier, and would trivially support common native features like being able to open messages in new windows.

Comment by xyzzy_plugh 1 day ago

IMAP, for one.

Comment by lern_too_spel 1 day ago

It's much worse. It is difficult to customize a native app, but browser apps are easy to modify with extensions, even easier with coding agents. If I have to use a proprietary app, a web app is least objectionable.

Comment by egorfine 1 day ago

[flagged]

Comment by tomhow 1 day ago

Please don't post snarky dismissals like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Comment by egorfine 1 day ago

Understood.

1. Can we agree that this kind of corporate tradition does in fact exist at Google?

2. Can we agree that Google has a history of treating projects this way?

Comment by tomhow 1 day ago

Repeatedly posing questions prefaced with “Can we agree...” comes across as a bit too much like cross-examination, and the guidelines specifically ask us not to cross-examine.

It doesn't matter if a snarky dismissal has some basis in reality; after all, pretty much every snarky dismissal does. The point is we don't want HN to be a snarky place. You're welcome to raise the topic of Google's corporate traditions in a curious, conversational style, just like anything else.

Comment by egorfine 1 day ago

Got it and I appreciate the feedback!

This comment was not meant to sound snarky (while the original one in fact was - am guilty).

Sometimes it feels like polite comment will go nowhere while being blunt may convey a more focused message. Not in this case though, I agree.

Comment by qwertyuiop_ 1 day ago

Could we start the count down clock on when Google will deprecate this app ?

Comment by hn_throw2025 1 day ago

Apple Silicon only. Thanks for nothing.