The Gemini app is now on Mac

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-app/gemini-app-now-on-mac-os/

by thm • 3 months ago

186 92 3 months 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).

anon373839• 3 months ago

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

tekacs• 3 months 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.

charcircuit• 3 months 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.

aldarisbm• 3 months ago

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

teekert• 3 months ago

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

exabrial• 3 months 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.

nozzlegear• 3 months 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.

NeutralWanted4• 3 months 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.

nnx• 3 months ago

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

antipaul• 3 months 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

verdverm4• 3 months ago

Google models are good, their products are all subpar

magicalhippo2• 3 months 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.

dzhiurgis2• 3 months 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.

solarkraft3• 3 months 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.

xnx• 3 months 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.

verdverm4• 3 months 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.

straydusk• 3 months ago

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

jsmo• 3 months ago

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

khuey• 3 months ago

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

comboy• 3 months 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?

operatingthetan2• 3 months ago

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

NeutralWanted4• 3 months 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

Flux159• 3 months 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.

shrx• 3 months ago

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

fg137• 3 months ago

This.

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

VectorLock• 3 months ago

Can you use it as your CarPlay assistant?

BakeInBeens• 3 months ago

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

mavamaarten• 3 months 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"

phamilton• 3 months ago

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

3vidence• 3 months 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.

gonzalohm2• 3 months ago

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

1Ecz3• 3 months ago

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

anon84873628• 3 months ago

Pixel OCR and translation has been fantastic for me.

egorfine3• 3 months ago

[flagged]

tomhow2• 3 months 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

egorfine3• 3 months 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?

Apreche2• 3 months ago

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

46493168• 3 months ago

What would that get you over just the chrome version?

xyzzy_plugh• 3 months ago

IMAP, for one.

zffr• 3 months ago

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

lern_too_spel• 3 months 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.

kridsdale3• 3 months 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.

Apreche2• 3 months ago

$50/year? GTFO

maz1b• 3 months ago

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

samxli• 3 months 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.

mojuba• 3 months 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.

saagarjha• 3 months ago

It's native SwiftUI with Googleisms

qwertyuiop_• 3 months ago

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

syntaxing2• 3 months ago

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

robot_jesus• 3 months 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.

syntaxing2• 3 months ago

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

hk1337• 3 months 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.

NeutralWanted4• 3 months ago

The best by far IMO. gemini-cli

mistercheese2• 3 months 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.

esperent• 3 months 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.

asimovDev• 3 months 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

dzhiurgis2• 3 months 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.

hn_throw2025• 3 months ago

Apple Silicon only. Thanks for nothing.

decancode• 3 months 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

wallofwonder• 3 months 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.

ChildOfChaos• 3 months ago

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

naskwo• 3 months ago

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

AM10101013• 3 months 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

toinewx• 3 months ago

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

HelloMcFly• 3 months 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.

llbbdd• 3 months ago

Why would it save any RAM if you already have a browser open where it just eats the cost of an extra tab? I haven't used it but I'm assuming it's electron or similar and not actually "native"

AM10101013• 3 months ago

I was essentially installing the web app as a PWA. Why? This allows me to set a deterministic keyboard shortcut to open gemini, in my case super + C, as if it were a native app. Downside is that it eats some ram. I haven’t benchmarked this I have no idea how heavy on ram this really is. FWIW I’m fine spending ram on this if it improves my workflow, which it does.

AM10101013• 3 months ago

Im just replying to my own comment to praise the team for the latest update. They have fixed the speed issue and the text is now a sane width on my screen.

Well done and thank you.

If I was to ask for more there are a few things that Claude and Codex are doing better on. Way more integrations / skills. I wish I could use MCPs and skills here. Modern design and feel too. This design, while native, feels very outdated

michaericalribo• 3 months 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.

klueinc• 3 months ago

This doesn't even run on Sonoma.

bibimsz• 3 months ago

linux continues to get no love

The Gemini app is now on Mac

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