Google quietly rolled out its Windows app with AI Mode to everyone last week, worldwide, English only for now.
The app itself isn’t new. Google tested it back in September 2024 with a limited experimental release, but it stayed tucked away from most users until this. What it does is sit in the background and pop up with Alt+Space — same shortcut Mac users already know from Spotlight, which is either a smart borrowing or a slightly cheeky one depending on how you look at it.
Beyond the search box, which you’d expect, you can point it at a specific window on your screen or just share everything and let Google’s AI work with whatever’s in front of you. That part’s more useful than it sounds — instead of copying text out and pasting it somewhere to ask a question, you just ask about what you’re already looking at.
Google Lens extends this further. Anything on your screen becomes searchable, not just open windows. Text in an image, something in a video frame, a screenshot — you can translate it, look it up, or ask about it without leaving whatever you’re doing.
More languages are presumably coming, though Google hasn’t said when.
