Google Narrows Feature Gap in Gemini Desktop App

Google is testing changes to narrow the feature gap between the Gemini desktop app and the web version.

The following features have been confirmed in current builds for trusted testers.

• Dedicated tabs for image generation and video generation added to the navigation menu
• The desktop app's first app settings panel
• A camera feature in the attachment menu that lets users take a photo to insert into a prompt
• Adding custom MCP servers in the Gemini Spark connector menu

Unlike Gemini Live, which supports real-time video sharing, the camera feature works by taking a photo and feeding it in as input. It's closer to extending an experience already available on mobile to desktop.

Custom MCP apps are already supported in the Spark web app, so this change effectively extends that feature to the agent settings of the Mac app. However, an official release date has not yet been announced.

Spark launched on macOS on July 1, and starting July 29, intelligent dictation and screen-awareness-based reasoning features also began rolling out. With image and video generation, camera capture, and connector management added, there will be fewer reasons to open a browser to use the Gemini desktop app.