Thanks to newly discovered code, Google’s plans to add Gemini to Chrome’s sidebar are now more concrete, as spotted by Windows Latest. The feature mirrors Microsoft Edge’s Copilot. We previously reported that Google was testing the feature in the latest Chrome Canary build. Now, a Chromium post mentioning its codename “Glic” confirms the integration.
If everything goes as planned, users could resize and detach Gemini from Chrome, turning it into a standalone sidebar. Google Chrome engineer Keren Zhu referred to the Gemini sidebar as a widget, maybe because it floats when you click Chrome’s menu button.
It’s still unclear whether the translucent widgets will be within or outside Chrome’s bounds. Still, there is a good chance they are inside the browser since Google says that’s a requirement for the adjustable window, and the corners may be rounded in Windows 11.
Google notes, “This change lifts the restriction that disallows making WS_POPUP window resizable (WS_POPUP is used by glic window). The bypass is temporarily limited to glic to prevent regression in other widgets. This historically has caused visual artifacts in bookmark editor, but it does not seem to happen anymore.”
Currently, three caveats are low priorities: a window does not have a shadow if it is not resizable, client area bounds change when toggling between resizable and non-resizable, and the top border of the Glic windows lacks a resizable handle. To make things even easier, you can use a keyboard shortcut to customize directly from the browser’s settings. We don’t know when it’ll become available to all Chrome users, but hopefully, it won’t be long.
