Google is quietly testing something in Chrome Canary that I think will either become one of the browser’s most useful or its most irritating additions ever.
It depends on how often you highlight text to copy it without wanting an AI to jump in.
So what exactly is Chrome testing?
The feature is a floating toolbar or pop-up that appears above any text you select on a webpage, similar to the menu that appears on Android phones. However, on the web, it offers four options: Ask Gemini, Copy, Share, and a three-dot menu.
Clicking Ask Gemini opens the Gemini side panel with your selected text as a prompt, ready for follow-up questions without switching tabs or manually copying the text to a tab with Gemini already open.
The three-dot menu tucks away two options: “Hide for this site,” which suppresses the toolbar on sites where you don’t want it showing up, and “Settings,” which opens Chrome’s general content settings page rather than anything specific to the AI assistant. That last part is clearly unfinished.
Does this mean Gemini is about to be everywhere in Chrome?
Google has been steadily adding Gemini entry points in Chrome, including the @gemini address bar shortcut and a pinnable AI Mode toolbar button, which is also currently in testing. So, yes, it appears the company wants Gemini to be an omnipresent AI layer.
The text selection toolbar takes that logic further: instead of you going to find Gemini, Gemini finds you every time you select something. Google hasn’t announced this feature publicly. It’s still in Chrome Canary, and there’s no guarantee it ever makes it to the stable release (via Windows Report).
This news comes after Google added an “Ask Gemini” shortcut directly to the right-click menu, something I noticed a couple of weeks ago. So, it’s not like interacting with Gemini has been a hassle or requires a lot of effort.
However, the new feature puts “Ask Gemini” front and center, so you can jump into Gemini without opening another menu first.
