A new experimental Google app for Windows
blog.google
blog.google
(Failing that, adding basic support for scaling text or UI via ctrl+plus/minus would be a huge improvement!)
With the exception of Chromium/Chrome [3] this's been a persistent issue with Windows desktop apps from Google (most of these also use hard-coded control sizes making the problem worse).
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/design/input/...
[2] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/windows.ui.viewman...
The problem with Make text bigger and Make everything bigger is they apply to every single application that supports them. Let's say I have two applications: A is comfortable enough to see and B isn't. If I change either of these settings to help me use B, A could now be a problem because it can take up too much screen real estate, which makes it unusable for a different reason.
This doesn't sound like much of a problem until you have 5 or more applications you're trying to balance via these two settings. In reality, it's more complex than I'm describing because I may need to change both settings to help with a new application, which then means I have to continuously test every other application I use to make sure they're all somewhat comfortable enough to use.
If an application I use updates to include support for these settings, I have to go through all this unplanned work again to try and make everything usable once more. It's frustrating.
I know people make fun of Electron, but one major plus point for me is I have per application scaling when using it, and so it gives me better accessibility than Windows does by far.
> (Failing that, adding basic support for scaling text or UI via ctrl+plus/minus would be a huge improvement!)
I'd consider this to be a better option.
I set my laptop (1920x1080) to 120%, effectively making it 1600x900 but with very good physical size of things. I set my external panel (2560x1440) to 160%, effectively making it 1600x900 also. KDE even visualizes the two panels to be the same size. Ontop of these basic DPI settings, you can then tweak font/text even further. Its quite amazing. Windows cannot do custom dpi per monitor, only a single custom dpi that gets applied to all monitors.
If you do go down the fractional scaling rabit hole, make sure whatever values you pick, both the height and width ends without any fractions after applying your custom dpi... that elimnates all blurs. In my example above, 2560/1.6 and 1440/1.6 gives nice round numbers, even though the operating systems typically only offer 100/125/150/175/200 etc.
I built a small console app for myself that takes the resolution and tests all increments of 1% to see which resolution combinations gives values that don't end with fractions at the end. So it tells me which effective resolutions I will get at which % settings. Its awesome and made it so that I can easily make so that my laptop and external display has the same amount of space (or line of code) on the screen, even though they are different physical sizes.
> Windows cannot do custom dpi per monitor, only a single custom dpi that gets applied to all monitors.
Yeah, support for custom DPI in general isn't great. I've been using https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/windows_10_dpi_fix.... for years to at least partially help.
Edit: I think I answered my own question about how recent the change might have been: https://blogs.kde.org/2024/12/14/this-week-in-plasma-better-...
This seems to be just after I last tried. I'll give it another go, thanks BatteryMountain!
I currently have the experimental feature enable at 150% scale for a laptop screen at 2560x1600 resolution. Have not had any issues by itself nor with an external 3440x1400 at 100% scale with GNOME 48.
Also, many apps (including Electron/Chromium apps) will still run under XWayland when using a Wayland session by default, because there are still a handful of small issues and omissions in their Wayland drivers. (It's pretty minor for Electron/Chromium so you can opt to force it to use native Wayland if you want.) In case of XWayland apps, you'll have to choose between allowing X11 apps to scale themselves (like the old days) or having the compositor scale them (the scaling will be right, even across displays, but it will appear blurry at scales higher than 1x.) I still recommend the Wayland session overall; it gives a much more solid scaling experience, especially with multiple monitors.
I'm wondering if this was the problem I was running into before – it sounds eerily familiar. I never got far enough to explore individual apps outside of preinstalled ones because I couldn't get comfortable enough. I appreciate your response as I wasn't aware of the different session types.
In both X11 and Wayland, you should usually see most applications following your scaling preferences nowadays. In Wayland sessions, you can ensure that applications always appear at the correct size, though at the cost of "legacy" applications appearing blurry. This behavior is configured in the Display Settings in KDE Plasma.
Also possibly useful: if you like the KDE Plasma session, it has a built-in magnifier; just hold Ctrl+Meta and use the scroll wheel.
Presumably this leads to a more unified scaling experience. This was one thing I was concerned about before, as it didn't seem that way. That's a solid improvement on its own.
> Also possibly useful: if you like the KDE Plasma session, it has a built-in magnifier; just hold Ctrl+Meta and use the scroll wheel.
This is useful yes, along with the rest of your comments. Thanks for your help.
So if you take a 2560x1440 panel, 160%/1.6 scaling factor will give you 1600x900, hence there won't be any artifacts. Between 100% and 200% there are maybe 5 combinations that will give you clean resolutions.
As an example:
Enter monitor Width (1920):
Enter monitor Height (1080):
1920x1080 at 100%
1600x900 at 120%
1536x864 at 125%
1280x720 at 150%
1200x675 at 160%
960x540 at 200%
800x450 at 240%
768x432 at 250%
640x360 at 300%
Aything besides these value WILL give you artifacts at some level.
This is wrong. Windows supports per monitor DPI since Windows 8 and have an improved API since Windows 10. I find it the only good implementation among desktop OSes. It is the only one that guarantees that font renders align with the pixel grid.
Many old apps do not support this API though. It is opt-in and while there is a hybrid mode to let Windows scale fonts and Win32 components via API hooks, without implementing DPI change callback most apps turn into blurry mess.
Usually browsers have the gold standard implementation of those callbacks hence why Electron is used everywhere.
If I want to set them to different scaling factors, I have to use one of the values from the drop downs (100/125/150/175/200%), which is not what I want.
> Windows cannot do custom dpi per monitor, only a single custom dpi that gets applied to all monitors.
Here are all of my monitors at different DPIs: https://imgur.com/a/q3z2P1E . They don't have a "single DPI" that gets applied to all of them. The custom DPI setting is for changing all base system DPI.
> I cannot set one monitor to 120% and another to 160% (both are custom values), like on KDE.
Okay you're unhappy with the granularity. Yes Windows uses 25% granularity.
I don't know if this will work but you can probably do a combination of changing the base DPI and then calculating the 25%. So you can set the base DPI to something like 120 (which is 125%) and then set the other monitor to 125% which gives 156%:
I think the base DPI is stored in this registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics\AppliedDPI
It is a DWORD value
Any app implementation of the windows setting could expose a multiplier of it somewhere. They already did the hard part of building a dynamic UI...
Google have wanted to get people out of the web and into an app for a long time and have mostly failed because traditional search is so tied to the open web.
AI Search is a lot less tied to the open web (for better or worse) and so apps make a lot more sense.
Why do you say that? And, why do they botch their own cash cow - AdWords?
Meta is the perfect example of this. In browser newsfeeds have the same ad load as the app but by steering everyone into an app and then controlling the experience there they make a shit ton more money.
Not sure if there's actually been that many more search labs out of Google, but there's certainly been a lot more worth talking about. Impressive to see to be honest.
Still, nice that Google has woken up, even if the search result quality hasn't improved much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop#Results_list:_t...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/283722910233
https://web.archive.org/web/20060112110931/https://desktop.g...
The dead Internet theory continues to prevail. What is old is new again because nothing new can be created. The Hollywood reboots formula works, so we continue it with technology reboots.
I followed search appliance closely when they announced it. It was interesting technically and looked cool, but seemed like a dead end similar to desktop as applications were largely moving off of racks/desktops. I was right about that, but I expected Google to offer a web-based search appliance and they never did beyond custom searches. Algolia fills that opportunity nicely now.
Fool me once, ...
Like with messaging apps, everything fractioned to fall to a zero sum game of exclusive 'experiences'.
Not to derail this Windows thread, but is there anything that works remotely well on Mac? The built-in options are ... lacking
I find cmd+space to be 10000000x better than windows for applications though
The other big thing that’s frustrating is it’s never clear to me when it’s done searching and when it still has more results to find.
I use FileLocator Pro on Windows, and a fairly organized hierarchical structure for all my files (that lives outside of the My Documents crap).
It doesn't need indexing - it makes use of very performant MFT querying to speed things up (and can of course search contents as well). Not quite instant unfortunately, but on modern hardware it's not too bad. I tried Everything and other index-based technologies but was never quite satisfied. I do really miss LookOut for email, that's one of the best search experiences I ever knew.
But Google App is more than a search bar for filesystem, it's like Perplexity
(disclaimer: I work at Google, but nothing related to this app)
That said, I do wonder why Linux gone search is always so slow even on indexed files.
Huge exaggeration.
It just needs to be ext4, and like 90% would be covered b you by that.
For remaining 10%, (and only if you care), XFS and btrfs would be more than enough.
A privacy policy can help confirm the absence of data collection as much as it can also be used to explain how collected data (if any) is used. If anything it's a helpful change, as it provides a standardized way for apps to confirm they collect no data.
Any app submitted to the iOS store has the same requirement to provide a privacy policy too, and again even if no data is collected.
General note for app developers: Try to think of the worst, most sociopathic things you could do with your app's level of access. Then reassure your customers by using your privacy policy to create a legal obligation never to do the things which would enable the ability to do those things.
If you don't tell me you're not doing it (in a way that I can clearly sue you if you do), I have to assume that you are doing the absolute worst things your app is technically capable of doing with the data it has access to. That's just the way the world works these days.
Or even AI training, your companies secret sauce recipe might be regurgitated on demand for your competitors.
Absolutely not. This is trying to turn a desktop computer into a mobile phone.
I'm sure everyone already understands this, but just to be clear:
There is NEVER, just NEVER, ABSOLUTELY NEVER, going to be a SINGLE QUERY that you want to search BOTH your local files AND the web for. If you want to search the web, you open the web browser. If you want to search your local files, you want privacy which means you don't want the query going to the online search engine. It's a catastrophic privacy risk to put both things in the same box just for the convenience to not have to open the web browser, which is completely pointless either way because you're going to have the browser later anyway if you want a web result.
I'm convinced that Microsoft, Google and (once) Canonical do this fully knowing that some people don't take their own privacy seriously with computer devices or lack the understanding to do so, and when they start letting these things happen and accepting these intrusions, it becomes normalized and suddenly nobody has any privacy left. In the future all your local files will be posted to web servers automatically all the time without consent because that's just what will be the "normal" and accepted pattern by then. This already happens with OneDrive. People get their files sent to Microsoft all the time having no idea it is happening. Google Drive is the same for mobile. People use the "cloud" barely understanding that their data is in someone else's computer, and in many cases without even being aware that they are using the cloud in first place.
The worst of all is that even if you wanted this, in 5 years it's probably going to be "sunsetted" anyway since it's Google.
Windows itself is trying to turn a desktop computer into a mobile phone. I try to avoid google and windows because of privacy issues already, but even without them I'm afraid it's only going to get harder to own a computer that does work for you without also being used against you by somebody else.
- Microsoft PowerToys Run https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
- Keypirinha https://github.com/Keypirinha/Keypirinha
- Flow Launcher https://github.com/Flow-Launcher/Flow.Launcher
If they can index google photos and gmail too then I might try.
> Are you sure they lost?
Well, Chrome and not Microsoft's browser is the dominant webbrowser, and at the heart of MSFT's anti trust case was bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. So, yes. MS did lose.
But since then most cases have been nothing more than slaps on the wrist? Have any major companies faced dire consequences for their anticompetitive practice.
So why would they stop using their market position in ways that benefit them and at worst result in minor fines or wrist slaps?
Nice to see, though I gave up on Windows a short a while ago for Linux and KDE's Krunner is seriously awesome; even used it to do some trigonometry the other day!
The UI is a little annoying at times. Some apps receive the alt+space key so it doesn't always behave like you expect.
Checking Task Manager it used about 43MB of memory whether running as a background process or in the foreground, showing search results.
Mobile is different, Google has plenty of native apps on Android and iOS. But on desktop almost everything has been browser based such as YouTube, Gmail or Docs. Personally, I would love to see something like a native YouTube Music app similar to Spotify instead of being locked into a browser tab.
I think part of this shift comes from the pressure of modern native apps like ChatGPT’s desktop client. With a quick shortcut like Alt+Space you instantly open a search/chat box, that kind of OS level integration is not possible with a browser or even with PWAs.
So while this might look like a small product announcement, I see it as a bit of a paradigm change for Google.
1. Alt+Space to activate the menu;
2. Down Arrow; Enter to restore the screen (if maximized or minimized);
3. Alt+Space to activate the menu;
4. Down Arrow; Down Arrow; Enter to move the window;
5. Arrow Keys to change the window position.
1. Alt+Space+m
2. Arrow keys to move around
I still think that the Google Windows program looks more like Apple Spotlight than the ChatGPT companion window pictured there though.
This is a really confusing call to action.
Seeing the Google Labs name brought back bad memories. Google had an amazing app called Google Talk. It was small, fast and you could chat from your computer to somebody's Gmail account. But then Google announced labs version of google talk. It was slow and broke local video playback. And then that was replaced with a crappy extension you had to run in their browser thus ending Googles short small useful app story.
They'll run with it a bit, maybe release it, then abandon it shortly there after and eventually shut it down.
This is how you access the system menu of a specific window. That standard thing at the top left that has "Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize" and "Close" options.
In particular, Alt-Space, X is a pretty damn useful keyboard shortcut for maximizing current window.
Kinda weird that no one in on this app's team knows that.
Now if only Google would bring back the Google One Windows VPN client.
In 10 years Google will be known for Android and Maps, I don't think they'll even be known for YouTube because TikTok if they dropped a web longform spin on their algo they'd displace YT within 3 years.
The design methodology goes way back. If you're in the Bay Area go to the Computer History Museum and inquire with a Mr. Ted Nelson. People have been singing this gospel for years and now that, "everyone's shit out of ideas" suddenly the Bigs get wise to, "humane UI patterns?" I don't buy it. Specifically summoning a text prompt with a UI short-hand is copyrightable; especially if you're Nintendo or Google or Apple. Go ask Larry Tesler if Ted Nelson isn't taking appointments.
Also, they are probably trying to figure out how to replace search traffic that switched to ChatGPT.
It isnt as much as "omg, we need more data!!" but as some of the other comments show, it is _probably_ part of a larger defensive move where most LLMs are moving into controlling-the-pc domain. OpenAI has something, Claude has something, so it is reasonable to expect Google to do something as well. The fact that it is Gemini is another clue that it is indeed that.
Why would I need random web garbage when searching my "computer files, installed apps, Google Drive files" (even apps don't fit, but at least that's a tiny set)
If you have a good argument to make, make it. Comments like this one don't progress either side's understanding of the situation and devalues valuable discussion into hysteria (likely because you just dislike the consequences). PG realized it decades ago, despite his personal dysfunctions: https://themindcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Gra...
Search in the Start Menu has been doing this by default for years. If I wanted to search the internet, I would have used the search box in my browser that is already open 24/7.
This doesn't add any convenience, it just pollutes search results with irrelevant garbage.
But the goal with these things isn't to provide a better user experience. It's to juice engagement metrics, because our industry sucks.
https://fratellobigio.com/posts/make-windows-search-fast-aga...
- open Indexing Options (get to there from the Start Menu, or from Control Panel)
- click on Advanced
- go to the File Types tab
- find doc, docx, or whatever in the list
- change from "Index Properties and File Contents" to "Index Properties Only"
Honestly I haven't tried this so I can't vouch for it, but it seems to be the official way to go.
I have, sadly, started closing Safari so that my laptop is still charged the next time I open it.
Is this a whole system indexing application? Instant search across all installed documents? I have nearly 40TB on my primary windows desktop computer and would LOVE that. Granted much of that is decades of home video but still.
until Lucy pulls the football again.
How does Google expect anyone to trust them.
I absolutely loved the Google Windows search app, and even went as far as fighting for our org to install the google appliance, only for Google to pull the rug out from under us.
They have Exchange solutions working for over 2 decades but the Google Appliance barely lasted 5 years.
Several apps already fight for that keyboard shortcut sequence. Claude, now this...
(I know the hotkey combo is customizable, but it's still offputting that they chose that one.)
PowerToys is not installed by default and neither is this Google app, obviously. It's absolutely reasonable that Google picks the most intuitive and common shortcut for an app launcher and if the user wants to maintain two or more launchers, it's up to them to configure non-conflicting keyboard shortcuts that are the most intuitive to them.
When your friend comes upto you and says "We're starting a business", do you immediately go like "haha, you're gonna lose?"
My wish is folks on hacker news have a bit of humility about these kind of things.
No, because my friend (presumably) doesn't have an extensive track record of failing in business. But Google does have an extensive track record of killing products for no good reason. Precedent matters, and at this point it's foolish to start using any Google product that you don't have to.
To you. If you dont understand the reason, again, I encourage you to be humble and try to understand what is going on. Remember, all of these companies are operated by perfectly reasonable people.
Google has zero reason to keep this effort going. It won't make them any significant money.
If I were a bettin' man, and I am, I'd say it's a promotion project for some developer or team who is going to abandon it as soon as they move on. Which is SOP for Google.