Google Chrome will soon let you talk to Gemini right in the address bar

16 April 2024, 19:24 published

Google appears to be working on adding quick access to its AI chatbot Gemini to the drop-down menu that appears in your address bar. If you want to talk to the bot quickly you’ll be able to type in ‘@gemini’ and get instant access to the bot.

According to Windows Report, Chrome is due to have a ‘chat with Gemini’ shortcut to the address bar, so you don’t have to go to the official Gemini website. The feature is yet to be widespread, but with the ‘chat with Gemini’ shortcut, you should be able to give it a try.

It’s not surprising to see Google forging ahead with its newest AI assistant in Chrome (and on Chromebooks) – in fact, Gemini was technically implemented into the browser back in February, when Google introduced an AI-powered ‘help me write’ feature. Microsoft has been pushing its own AI helper Copilot aggressively across everything from the Edge browser to Windows tablets. Google has demonstrated a more reserved approach to AI tools compared to Microsoft’s bull-in-a-china-shop efforts, but it makes sense that the search engine giant wants to keep pace with the competition.

How to use Gemini in Chrome right now

You can try typing out ‘@gemini’ and see if anything comes up, but as of right now it’s not functional – you can’t click on it or select it. It’s still part of a Chrome Canary patch, which is Google’s channel for testing out potential new features that enthusiasts and developers can try out and give feedback on.

If you’d like to try it out, you can launch and set up Chrome Canary, and once the test browser is installed you can enter chrome://flags in the address bar and hit enter. This should take you to the ‘Expansion pack page for the site’ and you’ll be able to enable the starter pack.

Restart the browser and you’re done! You should then be able to chat with Gemini from the address bar. Of course, as this is still in testing there’s no guarantee that it’ll work flawlessly, and we can’t be sure just yet that the feature will make it to the public version of the browser. However, if it does make it to the public it’ll be good news for Gemini fans or anyone who wants to get more familiar with the ChatGPT alternative.