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).
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.
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.
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 This design, while native, feels very outdated
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"
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.
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.
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?
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
I too am interested in Pi and Codex, but haven’t seen any full-featured web UIs for them yet. Would be happy to know if there are some!
One thing I’m considering (depending on how happy I am with OpenCode after trying to remove some questionable functionality it has) would be to make Pi (or Codex) speak the OpenCode protocol so that its web UI can be used with it.
> 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'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.
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.
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)
it may not be meaningful for you (the user), but usually has benefits for the provider, from binding arbitration clauses in the ToS to deeper commercial suveillance.
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.
98 comments
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
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
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.
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.
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...
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.
Other than that agreed going okay so far.
Android feels like more of a liability than an asset to Google these days.
Can’t even use the new Gemma on device model… no model selection besides fast/normal/thinking.
Also requires Google login
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.
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...
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.
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.
The Gemini app is kind of terrible (apart from the models) but Gemma 4 runs great locally already.
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.
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.
One thing I’m considering (depending on how happy I am with OpenCode after trying to remove some questionable functionality it has) would be to make Pi (or Codex) speak the OpenCode protocol so that its web UI can be used with it.
- 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.
Have been seeing that happen consistently where older chats have some messages missing in between
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
The browser experience is 10x better
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/27/shit-shack/#binding-arbit...
> Remember, an app is just a website skinned in the right kind of IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it
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?