- 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
- 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
- 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)
- And to circumvent browser plugins.
- 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.
- As long as installing web apps to desktop with real app UX sucks horribly, we will remain needing this.
- 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).
- Google does not let you store your home and work address without storing everywhere you go on Google Maps. So indeed, no chance.
- It was always possible to store it in the browser’s localStorage, so…
- 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.
- it's not the best but I have a whole other account just for gemini. It's valuable to keep that context.
- It still would need to go to the cloud so you can see the chat from another device logged in to the same user.
- Meanwhile, I still can't use Gemini as my Android Auto assistant.
- It is widely rolled out now and not just in the US.
- 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"
- I just got it last week. Still a few quirks, but positive so far.
- Do you have an option to not use it? Google forcefully updated my TV and the normal assistant is gone now
- 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!)
- How do you watch anything without network access?
- 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.
- Roku
- 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.
- This.
Android feels like more of a liability than an asset to Google these days.
- Can you use it as your CarPlay assistant?
- 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.
- The best by far IMO. gemini-cli
- 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
- 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.
- 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...
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- I don’t even have that in Gemini web yet. They only released it last week and are doing a staged rollout.
- 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
- 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.
- Google models are good, their products are all subpar
- 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.
- [dead]
- It seems that I cannot paste screenshots into the Mac app, whereas this does work in Gemini running in the browser (Chrome).
- Any way to run this on Gemma 4 only? If there was a “local” mode, I would seriously think about installing this.
- 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.
- I run lmstudio now and it’s more like a “chat” bot. Where as Gemini app is more like an agent.
- 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.
- 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...
- 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
- Heard it's written in Swift for this native adaptation. That's a good sign.
- I mean. It’s not that hard to write a wrapper for an LLM connector in Swift using coding agents. They probably used Claude.
- > 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.
- 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.
- I ended up just using the web version, which is actually better than the native app (multiple tabs works!).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Really? Right now both Claude Code and Codex seem substantially more capable than Gemini CLI to me.
- Tried antigravity and cli a few times. I'm unable to handle that prodigious toddler. Are you guys able to make use of it?
- 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
- [dead]
- CLI is great, probably 90% as good as CC.
- In my experience, it was fine for simple tasks - but CC was well ahead for anything which required substantial “thinking”.
- 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?
- 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.
- [dead]
- 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.
- [dead]
- still on the latest pixel phone - gemini can't read basic things.
- Pixel OCR and translation has been fantastic for me.
- [dead]
- [dead]
- How about making something we actually want, like a GMail app for mac.
- What would that get you over just the chrome version?
- It would be much snappier, and would trivially support common native features like being able to open messages in new windows.
- 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.
- IMAP, for one.
- [flagged]
- 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
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- Could we start the count down clock on when Google will deprecate this app ?
- Apple Silicon only. Thanks for nothing.
