Google has released a Gemini desktop app for Windows on 10 September 2026. It installable on Windows 10 and Windows 11, on both x64 and ARM64 machines. It is free to download from gemini.google/desktop.
Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 10 on 14 October 2025 and now sells security patches for it through a paid Extended Security Updates subscription that runs into October 2027. It is still on a lot of PCs. Statcounter put Windows 10 at 30.14% of desktop Windows installs worldwide in August 2026, against 68.6% for Windows 11. A big reason for that is because hardware fails the Windows 11 requirements. Google has shipped to those PCs anyway. Microsoft’s own Copilot is built in deepest on Windows 11.
Gemini is Google’s AI assistant. It is the chatbot at gemini.google.com, it is what has replaced Google Assistant on phones and speakers, and Gemini is also the name of the model family underneath. You type or say something, it answers, and it can read files you hand it. It already runs on cheap Android phones here. On a PC, until now, it worked through a browser tab.
How to install
Go to gemini.google/desktop, take the Windows download and run the installer. Google’s requirement line reads “Windows 10 or later (x64 and ARM64)”. You sign in with a Google account, and chats and memory sync with the phone app and the website.
App or browser?
Well, the app is more powerful.
With Alt + Space. Press it and Gemini opens on top of whatever is on screen, takes a question, then goes away again. Google’s example is checking a fact in a document or getting title ideas for a presentation without leaving the presentation. The app also has a sidebar holding your Notebooks and recent chats, and it connects to Gmail and Google Drive, so you can ask it to draft a project summary out of mail and files you already have.
Image and video generation are built in: Nano Banana for images and Gemini Omni for video, both of which run inside the desktop app. The app also carries Gemini Spark, Google’s agent that runs tasks on Google’s servers rather than on your PC, so it keeps working with the laptop shut.
Spark, Omni and the bigger creation limits need a Google AI subscription and an account registered to someone aged 18 or older. Google AI Plus reached Kenya in September 2025 at KES 900 a month, with an introductory KES 500 for the first six months, and AI Pro at KES 3,700. Spark has its own map: Google’s support page says it works wherever Gemini apps work, except the European Economic Area, Nigeria, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Mac got this app first, on 15 April 2026, and it wants macOS 15 or newer on Apple Silicon.
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