Gemini’s homescreen redesign reaching Advanced subscribers

Google has started the rollout of Gemini’s homescreen redesign shown in September. The company is aiming for a more user-friendly and accessible experience by going for minimalism. Now, the AI-powered chatbot’s homescreen looks more like Google Search’s, at least for “Advanced” subscribers.

This year, Gemini has received some notable changes, like the floating overlay for results. One of the main goals of AI-based service developers is to remove the barriers that make these services seem intimidating or overwhelming to the less tech-savvy. The latest redesign to Gemini’s UI directly addresses that problem.

Gemini’s homescreen redesign rollout has begun, first to Advanced subscribers

Previously, opening the Gemini app would display a greeting at the top of the UI. For Gemini Advanced subscribers, the greeting would simply say “Gemini Advanced” to let them know they have their subscription active. Below the top message was a carousel of cards with sample prompts you could use to get started with the service. This carousel was hideable if you wanted, though.

Below the carousel of cards was the “Recents” section (“Chats & Gems” for Advanced subscribers). This section displayed a brief history along with shortcuts to your previous three chats or requests to Gemini. At the bottom of the UI was the text box for typing prompts, as well as shortcuts to Voice Search, Photo Search, and Gemini Live.

In the new UI, Google has gotten rid of most of that. The company replaced the carousel of suggested prompts and the history of recent conversations with a simple greeting in the form of “Hello, [your name].” The history is now accessible via a new “Chat” icon in the upper left corner. Also, the bottom area with the text box and shortcuts now takes up much less space by default, although it will expand if you tap on the text box, adopting the previous format.

New minimalist UI available in Gemini app and web version

Currently, the new design is only available to Gemini Advanced subscribers. The web version of the service also adopted the new UI for a more cohesive experience across all platforms. Hopefully, the company will soon roll it out to free users as well. The new UI seems like a more user-friendly way to present the service to the public, which is great news. That said, the cards with suggested prompts were a useful starting point for new users.