The Gemini app is now on Mac

(blog.google)

94 points | by thm 9 hours ago

16 comments

  • decancode 8 minutes 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

  • originalvichy 5 hours 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 hours ago
      It was always possible to store it in the browser’s localStorage, so…
      • tekacs 3 hours 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.
  • shrx 4 hours ago
    Meanwhile, I still can't use Gemini as my Android Auto assistant.
    • BakeInBeens 2 hours ago
      It is widely rolled out now and not just in the US.
    • phamilton 2 hours ago
      I just got it last week. Still a few quirks, but positive so far.
      • gonzalohm 47 minutes ago
        Do you have an option to not use it? Google forcefully updated my TV and the normal assistant is gone now
        • neya 15 minutes 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!)
          • gonzalohm 3 minutes ago
            How do you watch anything without network access?
      • 3vidence 1 hour 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.

    • VectorLock 3 hours ago
      Can you use it as your CarPlay assistant?
    • fg137 4 hours ago
      This.

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

  • hk1337 2 hours 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.

    • NeutralWanted 2 hours ago
      The best by far IMO. gemini-cli
      • esperent 1 hour 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.

      • mistercheese 2 hours 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.

    • dzhiurgis 49 minutes 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.

  • maz1b 3 hours ago
    Heard it's written in Swift for this native adaptation. That's a good sign.
    • samxli 1 hour 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.
  • syntaxing 3 hours 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 31 minutes 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.

  • antipaul 5 hours 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

    • verdverm 5 hours ago
      Google models are good, their products are all subpar
      • magicalhippo 2 hours 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.

      • nimchimpsky 4 hours ago
        [dead]
  • xnx 5 hours 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.

    • straydusk 4 hours ago
      I'm about as AI-pilled as anyone. Stitch is the only Google powered AI product I use. How are they winning?
      • jsmo 4 hours ago
        Never heard of it, seems like a Wix / Canva knock-off?
    • comboy 4 hours 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?
      • NeutralWanted 2 hours 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
      • operatingthetan 4 hours ago
        CLI is great, probably 90% as good as CC.
        • girvo 4 hours 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?
          • operatingthetan 4 hours 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.

      • nimchimpsky 4 hours ago
        [dead]
    • khuey 4 hours ago
      Really? Right now both Claude Code and Codex seem substantially more capable than Gemini CLI to me.
    • verdverm 5 hours 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.
    • andrewmcwatters 4 hours ago
      [dead]
  • Flux159 5 hours 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.

  • 1Ecz3 4 hours ago
    still on the latest pixel phone - gemini can't read basic things.
  • sayYayToLife 4 hours ago
    [dead]
  • Apreche 4 hours ago
    How about making something we actually want, like a GMail app for mac.
    • 46493168 4 hours ago
      What would that get you over just the chrome version?
  • egorfine 4 hours ago
    Excellent. Now the Project Manager of this app gets a promotion at Google, the team gets disbanded to other projects and this app gets abandoned. Congratulations!
  • qwertyuiop_ 3 hours ago
    Could we start the count down clock on when Google will deprecate this app ?
  • hn_throw2025 1 hour ago
    Apple Silicon only. Thanks for nothing.
  • exabrial 5 hours 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 4 hours 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.

      • NeutralWanted 2 hours 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.