Chrome forces Gemini global shortcut onto your Mac
Everyone wants Gemini, right? Google already made the power switch on Android phones into a Gemini button. Everyone wants that! Google doesn’t have the same control over desktop computers. But in MacOS on the Apple Macintosh, any application can set a keyboard shortcut that works globally — in any…
Everyone wants Gemini, right? Google already made the power switch on Android phones into a Gemini button. Everyone wants that! Google doesn’t have the same control over desktop computers. But in MacOS on the Apple Macintosh, any application can set a keyboard shortcut that works globally — in any other app. If you install the Chrome web browser, pressing control-G — and in one report, shift-command-G — in any app brings up a Gemini window. Even if the app was already using that key combination. Chrome doesn’t ask first, or tell you when it takes the key. Marcin Wichary discovered this while he was using the Nova code editor. He wanted to go to a particular line of code, he hit ctrl-G, and up popped Gemini! [Mastodon; blog post] This actually conflicts with control-G in Chrome’s own dev tools! Google changed it so if you have the Gemini shortcut switched on, the dev tools shortcut helpfully switches to alt-G. Muscle memory is nothing to the necessity of Gemini. [Chromium] Marcin filed a bug. Google locked the bug report from view! [Chromium] This behaviour’s been around a while — the earliest report I found is from November. It doesn’t seem to happen on every Chrome installation. [Reddit] Part of the problem is that MacOS lets apps do this at all. But it’s still Google doing it without asking or even telling. At Google, user consent is for “maybe later.” But someone’s quarterly marketing numbers went up. And isn’t that what counts? Video — PodcastSource: Pivot to AI — Published — Category: Business