Gemini App for Mac
Michael Friedman (via Abner Li):
Today, we’re bringing the Gemini app to macOS as a native desktop experience, designed to live right where you work. It’s always just a keyboard shortcut away, so you can quickly get the help you need without losing your focus.
[…]
With our new native desktop experience, you can share anything on your screen with Gemini to get help with exactly what you’re looking at, including local files. If you’re reviewing a complex chart, you can share your window and ask, ‘What are the three biggest takeaways here?’ to get an instant summary.
Gemini will need Accessibility access to read full pages in a browser window.
Nano Banana is available for creating images, and Veo can be used for generating videos.
[…]
Free access to Gemini is limited, and Google has subscription plans with increased usage limits. Google AI Plus is $7.99 per month, Google AI Pro is $19.99 per month, and Google AI Ultra is $249.99 per month.
Gemini can also interact with files, the contents of a window, Google Drive, Photos, and NotebookLM. It’s multimodal, too, with support for the generation of text, images, video, and music. Dig a little deeper into Gemini’s menus and you’ll find support for Canvas, Deep Research, Guided Learning, and Personalized Intelligence.
Downloaded it and deleted it 30 minutes later when I found it automatically installs a setting to open automatically as a log in item. Deleting it in system settings does not solve the issue. It automatically returns it to the auto login setting. It takes control of the setting. Invasion of my privacy and control over my own machine. I’ve returned to the web app version.
We heard your feedback. We recruited a small team. They built 100+ features in less than 100 days. 🤯
100% native Swift. Lightning fast.
The team built this initial release with @Antigravity, and it went from an idea to a native Swift app prototype in a few days.
Took a peak at it and … it contains 1,856 Objective-C classes whose class name starts with Java.
What in the world are they doing?
So I had Gemini analyze Gemini. Looks like there’s a lot of shared Android code in there, but compiled to Objective-C and Swift.
Previously:
Update (2026-06-05): John Gruber:
The thing that really turns me off about the Gemini Mac app is Google’s gall. The Gemini app installs a background helper named “GeminiAppLauncher” in your login items. It also installs “GoogleUpdater” as a process with the privilege to launch in the background whenever it wants. Gemini never asks for permission to install either of these, and, most arrogantly, if you, as an informed user, remove either of them, the Gemini app silently adds them back. There is no setting in Gemini to disable this. There’s a mindset from some big companies that your system is theirs to play with at the system software level.
Previously:
Update (2026-06-08): Zac Hall:
I also have at least one chat thread that doesn’t actually work on Gemini’s Mac app. It works fine in the Safari “Add to Dock” version, though, since that’s just the website presented as an app.
Instead of letting me continue the chat, Gemini’s Mac app replaces the text entry box with a button to open the website. I’d rather just use my Safari web app version where it works fine.
Update (2026-07-13): Greg Pierce:
Y’all who want to complain about the ChatGPT Mac app must not have tried the Gemini app. What even is going on with this thing? It doesn’t quit when you quit. It’s menu bar item forceably injects itself at the far right of the menu bar when launched. Just junkware.
Previously:
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Added the app to my work computer where we have a Gemini licence or access (not sure how to call it), and the app is fine. It says it's native and Swift, but it just looks like a slightly improved web view of the Gemini website, with a collapsable sidebar and a neat Cmd Comma shortcut to go to Settings. A bit suspicious that the Chat menu doesn't use the Tahoe icons (as if these are just web pages). Not convinced by the usefulness of the "mini-chat" and toolbar icon things either. I may switch back to the Web App Safari thing I used to have.
Same experience as Chazak. It re-adds the login launch item *every time* you try to open the app. It also seems to hijack the Option-Space key command so that even when the app is not running, that keypress will launch Gemini (and it will re-add a login launch item). Seems like they want your muscle memory for ChatGPT to be hijacked to Gemini.
I uninstalled too and will just use it in Safari. Decided to keep the ChatGPT app after initially thinking I would uninstall it.
One good thing I liked about Gemini was that if I started a temporary chat, the option-space command would continue the temp chat in the mini window. That’s nice since most of my app use (i.e. non-in-browser use) is just random quick queries I need no history for.
A tasteless app from a company with no taste and no respect for user desires and user privacy. They've been doing this silent background updater garbage for years with Chrome which is why I don't use it. Chromium-ungoogled for those sites that don't work in Safari, sadly more of them these days.
The only apps I ever want to see from Google are invisible background services - search, imap email and maps. All of their "user interface" work is ugly and gross, including all of Android, its stupid ugly apps, the garbage Java stack and hideous "developer tools". YouTube apps ignore everything nice a platform like Apple TV provides and instead deliver a disgusting experience with garbage non-native scrolling and terrible play controls.
