The new UI on AI Studio is not just awful, because if it was awful it would be one thing, but it just so clearly appears to be a blatant downgrade from the previous UI. And it kind of feels a lot like what Microsoft does whenever they update Windows to a new version. Because once you already have a perfect UI there’s really nothing left to update, so anything else you’re making, you know, you’re making changes for the sake of making changes, and making it look like you’re ‘investing’ in service by continuously updating it, except since the thing was already perfect, every change you make now effectively just makes the thing worse.
The biggest gripe I have now is that they completely simplify the menu on the taskbar to the left and you used to be able to access a lot of different functionality and it just it all appears to be gone for the most part. But in addition to that, now when you use any of the tools from the right hand menu, like run settings, the right hand menu takes up an enormous amount of space, like so much more relatively than it did before, and there’s just absolutely no reason for it. And it essentially makes the UI unusable on a vertical orientation monitor unless you have both left and right taskbars minimized.
Worst of all though, there is now a persistent token count in the new UI that appears as a floating element on the page that follows you wherever you go. And I’m not sure why they thought it was important. You know, the whole point of having a 1 million token context window is that you shouldn’t have to worry about the token count. But more importantly, there was absolutely no issue with having to check the token count by opening the settings from the right-hand menu. Whereas now, having the token count constantly there quite literally takes up a good amount of screen space and for absolutely no good reason.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on this, or is anyone actually feeling more optimistic and happy about the new UI then I am? I personally don’t understand why this couldn’t have been an option or a choice for developers to opt-in to the new UI or rather opt-out and allow us to use the old, much more accessible, functional, and readable interface.
The old interface was laggy from the very first time I used it a few months ago and had gotten progressively worse over time. The new one isn’t. Everything else is secondary to me. Everything.
I don’t know if it’s just me, but there is an issue with the model Gemini 2.0 Flash (Image Generation) Experimental now after this UI update.
Whenever I send the first prompt creates the image, but then when I want to re-run my prompt or edit it, then send it again, it just sends the same image that was generated first, which probably means the seed is the same in the conversation, but either I’m blind or I cannot find the seed options in the Run Settings.
And even when I send more prompts asking, it’ll send that same message in the same session until I clear chat or just refresh without saving..
Any fix to this? Or did Google forget to implement this somehow into AI Studio?
The new interface is just extremely laggy for me, I find it hard to use on PC, while it’s completely smooth on my phone or tablet. Not sure what is the cause of this, but I prefer the old UI both by design and performance.
EDIT: solved the issue with turning on ‘Use graphics acceleration when available’ in my browser. Lag is completely gone. Seems the new UI is more reliant on GPU than the old one.
extra thanks to 2.5 Pro for suggesting this
Forgive me for any ignorance as I’m relatively new to using Gemini, it’s API, etc., but I do have some web app/coding experience over the years.
Could the interface be redesigned/rewritten in a ‘better’ way by simply using the available API, or does AI Studio do some things that aren’t accessible via any public api/methods?
I personally has a passing thought about it a few weeks ago as I wanted to structure things a little differently, like visualizing branches differently, and have re-usable, pre-configured system instructions and run settings that could be iterated/improved over time, etc. I’d like more features like ‘undo’/‘revert’, but with tracked history to go back to something you reverted from in case that approach was better, and so forth.
We’re(everyone) still doing a lot of testing with AI, so more tools and features to help refine those methods of testing/usage like saved configurations or even something like batch testing*(not just comparing two, but many at different run settings)* at different run settings or models to see differences in the results would be really great to see, and for me personally, help me gain a better understanding of how functionally, things are working.
I may give the New Firebase studio a try and see what it can come up with… but I have to imagine someone else has already worked on something like this; If it’s doable.
Completely agree with the original poster. The new UI is a classic case of “pretty but pointless.” It really feels like change for the sake of change, without any consideration for actual usability.
I’m especially frustrated by some of these “improvements” that seem completely ill-conceived:
“View more action” button: Right now, it only has “Make a copy.” Why? This function practically duplicates “Branch from here.” Both options create a copy of the chat. Instead of this useless option, we desperately need a “Delete chat” button there. Having to go to the Library to delete a single chat is incredibly inconvenient, especially when you accumulate a lot of them.
Update 14 April - Google added buttom “Delete Chat”
“Clear chat” function: Who even uses this and why? If a user wants to get rid of a conversation, they want to delete it with one click, not just clear the content. What’s the point of an empty chat? And the worst part is – even after “Clear chat,” the dialogue still remains in the Library! It’s an absolutely pointless function that’s just misleading.
"Modified by Moderator"They didn’t give us the option to stick with the old, proven, and functional interface. Hopefully, the developers will listen to the feedback on this.
I’m not happy with the new AI Studio interface. The best feature of the old chat was being able to move prompts/responses, delete unwanted parts, and replace documents. That’s all gone now. This is a really bad UI.
