I attempted the Gemini app for Home windows. It wasted my time
The Gemini app for Home windows is a entrance web page of types to Gemini’s generative content material: the LLM chatbot itself, which is all that seems in case you refuse to check in to Google’s companies with a Google account. When you do, that unlocks the power to entry saved chats, plus devoted tabs for photographs, video, and a saved library of the identical. Optionally connecting Gemini to your Workspace account (Gmail, Drive, and extra) permits entry to a “day by day transient” of your most essential emails.
That ought to be a productiveness increase, proper? Effectively…
Foundry
Competing choices, like ChatGPT’s Home windows app, let you join the agent to your desktop or companies like Slack. There, these brokers can take actions for you. Gemini can’t even do this.
Supposedly, one of many new Gemini app options entry to Spark, Google’s customized AI agent, a minimum of in Google’s weblog publish. I didn’t see it within the app, both as a function or perhaps a potential upsell. (I’m presently not paying $100 per 30 days to Google to entry Spark by way of a Professional plan, which can have affected what the app confirmed me.)
As an alternative, the app directed me to the “Scheduled Actions” by way of the Settings menu on the backside of the web page, the place I may pattern Google’s solutions, akin to sending me a recipe each weekend or suggesting a motivational quote each morning.
In case you obtain the Gemini app for Home windows, be sure to discover the Settings menu additional. There, the “Private Intelligence” tab will let you activate (or off) Gemini’s reminiscence about you. A separate “Import reminiscence to Gemini” tab lets you inform different LLMs to summarize what they learn about you after which feed that data to Gemini. (My colleague Ben experiences that Anthropic’s Claude does this as effectively.) There are a number of different controls to tweak, too.
