Gemini's new Windows app lets you talk to Google's AI with a keyboard shortcut

Gemini’s already accessible on practically every device that can browse the internet, but Google’s always looking for ways to make the its AI even easier to get to. Following the release of a dedicated MacOS client this past spring, Google’s expanding to another desktop environment with a new Gemini app for Windows.

Google announced its new Windows app in a blog post today. Installing the app won’t run Gemini locally on your own hardware — Google is still doing the heavy lifting in the cloud — but for dedicated Gemini users, installing the desktop app has a couple of benefits versus accessing the AI through a browser.

The desktop app enables a keyboard shortcut to call up Gemini from any screen (alt + space, on Windows), and once you enable access, also allows Gemini Spark to work with files stored locally on your computer (the Mac client gained that feature in July). Google also notes that you can use the desktop Gemini app to generate image and video files, but that aspect of the Gemini experience doesn’t seem any different in the app than it is in a browser window.

Certain Gemini features, like Spark automation and Gemini Omni integration for video editing, require a paid Google AI subscription. The app itself and basic Gemini functionality are both free, though. You can download the Gemini app for Windows (or Mac) here.