Please consider making the UI respect the user's custom text scaling settings for accessibility. I'm not referring to DPI scaling but the TextScaleFactor value at HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Accessibility (see [1][2]) that users can set in Ease of Access > Display > Make text bigger.
(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).
I'm split with this. If it helps other people, then I'm all for it. But speaking as someone who is legally blind and makes extensive use of these settings, Windows 10 accessibility drives me mad. I'm waiting for fractional scaling to improve for Linux so I can make the switch.
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 then have to go through all this unplanned work again to try and make everything usable again. 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.
Suspect this is another surface they want to play around with as a gateway into an AI/ChatGPT like experience.
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.
Google Desktop was mainly for local file search. Shame that the idea never really took off, and even today local search is hopelessly broken on both Windows and Mac.
It did take off. There were server pizza boxes and everything. It was killed in 2011 by the very same company that is now introducing it as a "new app" in 2025.
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.
Right. The box wasn't necessary to search, but was an indicator of Google Desktop's success. Furthermore, we can still leverage the dead binary with just a little system hacking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5ieNv7oelk
For Windows, Powertoys Run is great, but nothing beats Voidtools Everything for file search. It's an amazing piece of software that has retained the number one spot on Google search for the single term "everything" for an amazingly long time.
If memory serves me right, it could look for information in Word documents and instant messaging apps extremely quickly and then display results in a great UI similar to google.com. Nothing before or after ever matched its capability. A real shame the product was killed. I guess there was no money to be made there.
It was a time when federated and unified views were considered the optimal user experience and there were many flavors of the concept at the time (msft had search providers that would let you service any kind of result in windows or sharepoint search). However, 'brand awareness' started to take over. Nobody wanted to be just a provide to an obviously google-ish experience because it makes them easier to replace.
Like with messaging apps, everything fractioned to fall to a zero sum game of exclusive 'experiences'.
This was done to make Google the default search engine of your browser most likely Internet Explorer. They then pushed Firefox and then created Chrome. Now they have to be sure that your default search engine is Google.
No, 2005 was peak 'Don't be Evil'. It really was a different time. They made Desktop simply because it fixed search. Being in the default browser was a nice side effect.
Potentially it was a different time. Google did hire Eric Schmidt whose previous company Novell was destroyed by Microsoft. Some say that NT stood for Novell or NetWare terminator.
Doesn't everyone and everything have a chance of getting yanked? If this really makes your life better (assuming it does) for two years and then ends, didn't it give you two good years?
Highly recommend Everything instead. It's so freaking fast, can search by keywords, can sort by time change to see what files are being touched in real time, can search any "cloud" file if you have them locally ... And no ads!
I'm a big fan of Everything (and recently donated to the developer). I tried this Google app and was pleased to see that it seems just as fast as Everything for local file search. Presumably they use the same underlying mechanism for searching files (something about hooking into the NTFS index). I might give it a shot.
(disclaimer: I work at Google, but nothing related to this app)
With anything Google you have to worry about privacy. Where is the privacy policy? Does it associate information it finds on your PC to your Google identity?
Ok gave this a try. Actually pretty handy. I wish I didn't clean up my Windows PC so I could compare indexing of files, but it did a good job of finding most things but the things I searched for Windows was able to find too. But its nice to have an easy shortcut to Google search and also having Google Lens on my PC to translate text, ask questions about a screenshot etc. I love this feature on my android.
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.
Bet they're anticipating that at some point in the future they might want gemini to interface with your PC (ala Claude's "computer use" and openai's "operator")
If you have the top market position already in browsers and search, pretty easy to get people onto a product like this regardless of whether better alternatives exist.
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?
Are you sure they lost? If the CEOs had perfect crystal balls and knew that those particular business practices would result in the penalties that they got in their court cases, I bet they still would have done the same things.
Not that I am an expert in each case, but as part of the evidence was that people in leadership/decision making positions were informed that their practices and conduct was unlawful.
> 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.
Those have traditionally been for "power" users. Google is targeting "average" users with this, I believe. And if so, I also believe this will have more installs than any (all?) of those within a year.
Many people don't know how to cut and paste via the keyboard. The vast majority aren't even aware of Alt+Space. The only reason I use Alt+Space is to recover windows from off-screen areas.
I'm blind and alt+space is sometimes the best way to access select/copy/paste on the terminal. some other apps that have terrible a11y experience as well, but usually I use it there to closethe app asap.
It's because ChatGPT uses the same shortcut and Google is afraid to lose even more market share to it so they now use the same shortcut and the search bar is obviously designed after the ChatGPT desktop program.
Since the window menu actions that aren’t terrible with keyboard also have their own direct keyboard shortcuts (move and size are the ones that don’t, but hand positioning windows instead of using snap positions is tedious with keyboard), I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s a fairly rare thing.
I was thinking about Maximise, Restore, and Minimise, which I think were Alt+Space {X,R?,N} (haven’t used Windows for a few years), but I suppose Win+Up is now Maximise, and Win+Down Restore and Minimise—but you still need Alt+Space N to minimise from maximised.
Glad to see Google bring back an official search bar to Windows after discontinuing Google Desktop in 2011. IIRC ctrl,ctrl was the shortcut to pop up that search bar.
Now if only Google would bring back the Google One Windows VPN client.
I wonder how an LLM built with this Google app would do compared to one built with Recall data. Even though it might not get the same raw info as Recall I see it having more than enough to be competitive.
I get "Search Labs isn’t available for your account right now"
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.
> instantly search for information from ... of course, the web.
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)
This is my biggest problem with a lot of modern desktop search.
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.
For your security and convenience. Google has access to your Android phone, but, there are evil people who use computers. Google would like to know - like Microsoft and Apple - what are those people doing with their computers. /s
Since you're on HN, I assume you have a bit of curiosity so I encourage you to think beyond the first order effect of some of these news.
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.
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.
Sorry Google, but Alt+Space is already used by Powertoys Run. At least have the decency to pick a combo that isn't already being used by your competition. So classless, but I suppose that's par for the course.
(I know the hotkey combo is customizable, but it's still offputting that they chose that one.)
Would you rather have Big Tech sit on their cash and not innovate? Some of these ones would 100% fail, and that's the nature of doing business. Apple is trying something radical with Vision Pro. It isnt successful, but I'm glad they are trying it. Microsoft did something crazy with Windows Recall. Will I use it? Nope, I appreciate the risk taking.
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.
Please consider making the UI respect the user's custom text scaling settings for accessibility. I'm not referring to DPI scaling but the TextScaleFactor value at HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Accessibility (see [1][2]) that users can set in Ease of Access > Display > Make text bigger.
(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...
[3] https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40586200
I'm split with this. If it helps other people, then I'm all for it. But speaking as someone who is legally blind and makes extensive use of these settings, Windows 10 accessibility drives me mad. I'm waiting for fractional scaling to improve for Linux so I can make the switch.
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 then have to go through all this unplanned work again to try and make everything usable again. 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.
Suspect this is another surface they want to play around with as a gateway into an AI/ChatGPT like experience.
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.
Wasn't this done (20!) years ago? It seems very familiar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop#Results_list:_t...
Google Desktop was mainly for local file search. Shame that the idea never really took off, and even today local search is hopelessly broken on both Windows and Mac.
It did take off. There were server pizza boxes and everything. It was killed in 2011 by the very same company that is now introducing it as a "new app" in 2025.
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.
Those boxes were for enterprises, not for you to plug into your laptop.
Right. The box wasn't necessary to search, but was an indicator of Google Desktop's success. Furthermore, we can still leverage the dead binary with just a little system hacking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5ieNv7oelk
For Windows, Powertoys Run is great, but nothing beats Voidtools Everything for file search. It's an amazing piece of software that has retained the number one spot on Google search for the single term "everything" for an amazingly long time.
I used Agent Ransack for search on Windows, though I'm not on Windows any longer.
>local search is hopelessly broken on both Windows and Mac.
Not to derail this Windows thread, but is there anything that works remotely well on Mac? The built-in options are ... lacking
I find the file search annoying on Mac because it doesn't search the drive I'm in on finder (skill issue? Please tell me if that's configurable)
I find cmd+space to be 10000000x better than windows for applications though
Finder -> Settings (or Cmd-,) -> Advanced -> Default Search Scope
What's wrong with Finder and search scope set to "This Mac"?
If memory serves me right, it could look for information in Word documents and instant messaging apps extremely quickly and then display results in a great UI similar to google.com. Nothing before or after ever matched its capability. A real shame the product was killed. I guess there was no money to be made there.
Fool me once, ...
It was a time when federated and unified views were considered the optimal user experience and there were many flavors of the concept at the time (msft had search providers that would let you service any kind of result in windows or sharepoint search). However, 'brand awareness' started to take over. Nobody wanted to be just a provide to an obviously google-ish experience because it makes them easier to replace.
Like with messaging apps, everything fractioned to fall to a zero sum game of exclusive 'experiences'.
This was done to make Google the default search engine of your browser most likely Internet Explorer. They then pushed Firefox and then created Chrome. Now they have to be sure that your default search engine is Google.
No, 2005 was peak 'Don't be Evil'. It really was a different time. They made Desktop simply because it fixed search. Being in the default browser was a nice side effect.
Potentially it was a different time. Google did hire Eric Schmidt whose previous company Novell was destroyed by Microsoft. Some say that NT stood for Novell or NetWare terminator.
Why would I use it, when it has every possibility of getting yanked in the future?
Doesn't everyone and everything have a chance of getting yanked? If this really makes your life better (assuming it does) for two years and then ends, didn't it give you two good years?
Agreed. Won't be falling for that trap. Personally it's very hard to trust Google consumer products existing after 2-3 years.
Highly recommend Everything instead. It's so freaking fast, can search by keywords, can sort by time change to see what files are being touched in real time, can search any "cloud" file if you have them locally ... And no ads!
https://www.voidtools.com/downloads/
I'm a big fan of Everything (and recently donated to the developer). I tried this Google app and was pleased to see that it seems just as fast as Everything for local file search. Presumably they use the same underlying mechanism for searching files (something about hooking into the NTFS index). I might give it a shot.
(disclaimer: I work at Google, but nothing related to this app)
Stick this with Powertoys Run or Command Palette then your windows can become pretty powerful.
I love Everything + Wox (www.wox.one), have been my default setup on all Windows installs
But Google App is more than a search bar for filesystem, it's like Perplexity
Does it have Gemini?
With anything Google you have to worry about privacy. Where is the privacy policy? Does it associate information it finds on your PC to your Google identity?
Ok gave this a try. Actually pretty handy. I wish I didn't clean up my Windows PC so I could compare indexing of files, but it did a good job of finding most things but the things I searched for Windows was able to find too. But its nice to have an easy shortcut to Google search and also having Google Lens on my PC to translate text, ask questions about a screenshot etc. I love this feature on my android.
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.
Bet they're anticipating that at some point in the future they might want gemini to interface with your PC (ala Claude's "computer use" and openai's "operator")
Honestly I'd expect some new Web API built into chrome for this
it's hard to compete with other launchers like:
- 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.
If you have the top market position already in browsers and search, pretty easy to get people onto a product like this regardless of whether better alternatives exist.
Isn't that how MS and Google lost anti-trust cases?
MS got hit kinda hard back in the 2000s right?
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?
Are you sure they lost? If the CEOs had perfect crystal balls and knew that those particular business practices would result in the penalties that they got in their court cases, I bet they still would have done the same things.
Not that I am an expert in each case, but as part of the evidence was that people in leadership/decision making positions were informed that their practices and conduct was unlawful.
> 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.
Those have traditionally been for "power" users. Google is targeting "average" users with this, I believe. And if so, I also believe this will have more installs than any (all?) of those within a year.
Raycast is also coming to Windows at some point - https://www.raycast.com/windows
On KDE plasma, there's KRunner (Alt + Space default), also pretty neat.
no doubt chrome will automatically install it at some point
"to help you find what you need, faster" yeah, I know you care about me, google.
Press Alt+Space to activate? Nobody activate window menus from keyboard any more?
Many people don't know how to cut and paste via the keyboard. The vast majority aren't even aware of Alt+Space. The only reason I use Alt+Space is to recover windows from off-screen areas.
I'm blind and alt+space is sometimes the best way to access select/copy/paste on the terminal. some other apps that have terrible a11y experience as well, but usually I use it there to closethe app asap.
It can be useful to fix window positions when a window gets stuck off-screen:
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.
It's because ChatGPT uses the same shortcut and Google is afraid to lose even more market share to it so they now use the same shortcut and the search bar is obviously designed after the ChatGPT desktop program.
I do, every day. It's part of my muscle memory to maximize windows.
It's a little annoying that this Google app steals the alt+space shortcut, but you can remap it.
Since the window menu actions that aren’t terrible with keyboard also have their own direct keyboard shortcuts (move and size are the ones that don’t, but hand positioning windows instead of using snap positions is tedious with keyboard), I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s a fairly rare thing.
I was thinking about Maximise, Restore, and Minimise, which I think were Alt+Space {X,R?,N} (haven’t used Windows for a few years), but I suppose Win+Up is now Maximise, and Win+Down Restore and Minimise—but you still need Alt+Space N to minimise from maximised.
win+(down)(down) is more convenient than alt+space, N, IMO.
You can also activate by clicking the "G" system tray icon.
I remapped it to Scroll Lock.
I activate trabucco with alt+space. Menus I just use the shortcut of the thing I need to do.
"Try it for yourself by opting into the experiment in Labs."
This is a really confusing call to action.
Given the context, it seems unambiguous to me.
What is confusing about it?
I think he was expecting it to be an app download, forgetting that Google can push this feature to everyone via Chrome.
Is it bigger spyware than the website?
I can't get ride of this shit on my Android phone, I can't imagine the nightmare to be inflicted that annoying this on my computer too...
Finally a competitor to spotlight search on Mac
Exactly what I was thinking! I like spotlight a lot more than the Windows start menu.
I believe Raycast (which I like a lot on macOS) also has an upcoming Windows version.
While I'm at it, let me mail my hard drives and birth certificate to the Google offices.
Glad to see Google bring back an official search bar to Windows after discontinuing Google Desktop in 2011. IIRC ctrl,ctrl was the shortcut to pop up that search bar.
Now if only Google would bring back the Google One Windows VPN client.
I wonder how an LLM built with this Google app would do compared to one built with Recall data. Even though it might not get the same raw info as Recall I see it having more than enough to be competitive.
Google Toolbar is back, baby!
Looks like they forgot to scrub an old confirmation page too - I can still join Google+! https://www.google.com/toolbar/ie/done.html
Is it too cynical to assume that their goal is to get more data for their LLMs?
No I'm sure that's part of it. Also about gaining market share.
I get "Search Labs isn’t available for your account right now"
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.
> instantly search for information from ... of course, the web.
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)
This is my biggest problem with a lot of modern desktop search.
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.
I have a blog post for you (shameless plug):
https://fratellobigio.com/posts/make-windows-search-fast-aga...
> already open 24/7
I have, sadly, started closing Safari so that my laptop is still charged the next time I open it.
I'm pretty sure you can configure said desktop searches to exclude web results. At least on KDE it's pretty easy to do, one box to untick.
For your security and convenience. Google has access to your Android phone, but, there are evil people who use computers. Google would like to know - like Microsoft and Apple - what are those people doing with their computers. /s
Maybe if can index my files as well, better than microsft
… in other words, submit all of the data on your PC to Google to train their LLMs on.
Since you're on HN, I assume you have a bit of curiosity so I encourage you to think beyond the first order effect of some of these news.
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.
Exactly what I was wondering.
Also, they are probably trying to figure out how to replace search traffic that switched to ChatGPT.
I can't wait for this to be abandoned in a couple of years!
What about releasing the source of Android 16 QPR1 instead? Forgot about that one?
Install Google For Windows...
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.
Sorry Google, but Alt+Space is already used by Powertoys Run. At least have the decency to pick a combo that isn't already being used by your competition. So classless, but I suppose that's par for the course.
(I know the hotkey combo is customizable, but it's still offputting that they chose that one.)
Any launcher on any OS uses alt+space or win+space. Weird that you think this is somehow a power toys thing.
alt+space was already a Windows window menu hotkey since Windows 3.1
[dead]
Aaaaaand it's shut down
Would you rather have Big Tech sit on their cash and not innovate? Some of these ones would 100% fail, and that's the nature of doing business. Apple is trying something radical with Vision Pro. It isnt successful, but I'm glad they are trying it. Microsoft did something crazy with Windows Recall. Will I use it? Nope, I appreciate the risk taking.
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.
Please make it so downvotes (thumbs down) requires a double click. I don't want to send hurtful signals when I accidentally hit that.
First you would have to have the permission to downvote.