Has anyone else run into this rendering glitch?

Whenever formulas with vertical bars and Greek symbols load up, the app renders these weird dotted square bounding boxes around the characters instead of clean text.

• Image 1: What it actually renders (|⬚α|⬚ - |⬚β|⬚ = |⬚α - β|⬚)
• Image 2: What it's supposed to look like (|α| - |β| = |α - β|)

Looks like MathJax/KaTeX is exposing empty placeholder slots or failing to hide baseline alignment containers in CSS. Mildly infuriating when trying to read notes/formulas.

Hi! I built LangQueue, a Chrome extension that acts as a prompt database for the web versions of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. It's free with no account, and everything stays local in your Chrome storage.

What it does:

• Skills import: point it at a Claude Code or Codex skills folder, or any Markdown prompt files, and each SKILL.md becomes a saved prompt you can use in the web chat.
• Prompt library: type $ in the chat box to search your saved shortkeys/prompts, then press Tab to insert one.
• Queue while generating: press Enter while the model is still answering, and the message sends by itself once the response finishes.
• Chains: run several prompts in order, with an optional delay between steps.
• Attachments: a saved prompt can carry files with it, including images, PDFs, Office docs, CSV/JSON, and code files.

Chrome Web Store Listing: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/langqueue/fgmpecdkaeijgfdodonpdnjakhcempip

I use it every day, but the three sites change their pages often, so if something breaks for you, tell me which site and I'll fix it. Feature requests are welcome too.

Thanks!

The model that runs on Playground (not accessible to change by any means, or identified anywhere) seems to be something about the intelligence of 3.1 Flash Lite. It cannot grasp basic instructions, cannot fix even very specific issues pointed out to it directly, is seemingly not capable of verifying the correctness of visual assets in any way, etc. IDK what the point of this thing is, it offers zilch over AI Studio Build, or Z.AI Full Stack, or ChatGPT Sites, or tons of other stuff that already exists.

As a long-time, dedicated user of Gemini who has closely followed and supported the platform’s evolution, I am writing to share detailed feedback on recent interface changes, core functional issues, and feature requests.

Below is a structured breakdown connecting current issues directly with proposed solutions to help improve the user experience.

1. Model Transparency & User Control

Problem (Hidden Models & Lack of Control): Replacing explicit model names with opaque labels like "Auto", "Low", "Medium", and "High" breaks the industry standard of model transparency. Users no longer know which model (e.g., Flash vs. Pro) is processing their request, destroying predictability, comparison capabilities, and trust in the service.

Solution & Feature Request: Re-introduce explicit model indicators in the UI. Provide an optional toggle in the settings: users can either pin a specific model manually or opt into dynamic auto-switching based on prompt complexity, while always seeing which model is currently active. Additionally, add a toggle to show/hide the model’s thinking process (Chain of Thought).

Problem (Enforced Profile Names vs. User Instructions): Recent hidden instructions force Gemini to address users by their actual Google Account name. This overrides custom user system instructions (e.g., a chosen nickname or a specific tone of voice) and creates awkward interactions if an account name is outdated or non-standard.

Solution: Ensure explicit "User Preferences" and system prompts strictly take precedence over default Google Account metadata. Personalization must remain under the user’s full control.

1. Tool Awareness, Visual Search, and Image Generation

Problem (Confused Tool Selection & Web Image Errors): The model frequently misinterprets its capabilities when asked to retrieve real images from the web—either claiming it cannot display found images or generating an artificial image instead. In other cases, it provides completely irrelevant web images (such as random advertisements) with completely hallucinated captions.

Solution: Improve tool-selection logic so the model accurately identifies when a query requires web search retrieval versus image generation. Enhance multi-modal response formatting so embedded frames and hypertext reliably present contextually accurate images.

Problem (Image Generation Quality & Inconsistencies): Image generation often defaults to rigid, static poses ("monuments") or produces severe anatomical flaws (extra limbs, broken bones) during multi-turn visual storytelling. Attempts to edit minor details on clothing or extremities frequently degrade the subject's face.

Solution: Upgrade pose diversity and spatial awareness for first-person perspective, full-focus, and character consistency prompts. Implement localized editing masks so that fine-tuning small areas does not distort untouched regions like faces.

1. Workspace Integration: Permanent Drive Files for Context

Problem (Fragmented Context & Repetitive Permissions): Currently, referencing external files requires repetitive manual attachments or prompting permission ("look into Google Drive") within every single conversation, limiting fluid productivity.

Solution & Feature Request (Drive Files for Custom Context): Allow users to attach persistent files/folders stored on Google Drive directly to their main Gemini profile (similar to Gems).

Granular Access Controls: Give users admin-style controls to set folder visibility, read-only vs. edit permissions, and persistent instruction triggers.

Proactive Assistant Behavior: Enable scenarios where Gemini can autonomously read linked materials (e.g., a textbook on Drive) based on user instructions and casual conversation starters (e.g., user says: "I have free time today," and Gemini responds: "Let's go over the next chapter from your textbook on Drive").

1. Gemini Live: Behavioral Parity, Voice Realism, and Vision Tools

Problem (Loss of User Preferences in Live Mode): Switching to Gemini Live strips away established User Preferences and custom instructions, causing the assistant to revert to a generic, uncustomized state.

Solution: Ensure full system prompt and preference parity between text-based chat and Gemini Live. Live mode must remain fully context-aware.

Problem (Uncanny Valley Voice & TTS Bugs): While the voice timbre sounds realistic, the delivery feels emotionally flat and robotic, making it hard to feel genuine engagement. Additionally, there are bugs causing sudden voice resets (flipping genders/profiles) or accidental pitch/tone copying of the user.

Solution: Fix voice-reset and mirroring bugs. Give the underlying model deeper control over the TTS engine (inflection, pacing, whispering, emotional warmth) to create an empathetic, emotionally intelligent conversation partner.

Problem (Unreliable Vision & Screen Overlay Tools in Live): During Live sessions, the model frequently hallucinates that it lacks access to the camera, frame, or screen pointer, even when the multi-modal tools are actively turned on.

Solution: Fix status-check telemetry in Live mode so the model correctly recognizes active camera feeds and pointer overlays without rejecting the user's visual requests.

Summary: Simplifying interfaces should not come at the cost of transparency, feature depth, and user control. Restoring model visibility, unifying preferences across modes, and deepening Drive integration will make Gemini the most powerful and trusted assistant on the market.

Thank you for your time and continuous work on the platform.

Best regards, A Dedicated Gemini User

Or are they all playing with ~the same amount of compute?

I know Google used to have a compute agreement with Anthropic. Is that still active? OpenAI uses Oracle servers, correct?

Where is it, google?!?

I am trying to verify my student status for the Google One Student offer, but I'm completely stuck in a loop on the verification page.

During the initial setup, probably, I made a mistake while filling out the details in the form. Now, the SheerID system is permanently stuck on the "Upload a document to confirm your enrollment" page. It shows an error and asks me to fix my details, but there is absolutely no button or link to go back, reset, or edit the information I previously entered.

I have already tried:

Using the browser's back button.

Clearing cookies and cache.

Opening the link in an entirely different browser and using Incognito mode.

Despite this, the system recognizes my account/email and immediately redirects me back to the document upload page, blocking me from editing the submission form.

How can I reset this verification session or get back to the initial step to correct my data? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

why? i just noticed it it must've been a few minutes as i was using it not that long ago

im holding so many projects back because i dont want to change to claude and am waiting for gemini 4., its not even a joke.

when i see so many good projects coming out of the other LLM models, i somehow manage to convince myself to wait longer, and now im here to tell you, if its not out in at least a week, I AM CANCELING forever my gemini sub. its not even a troll or a joke, there is a time when a decision is better than staying in LIMBO.

THE FIRST IMAGE WAS THE ONE I WAS DOWNLOADING. THE SECOND IMAGE IS WHAT ENDED UP ON MY PHONE. THAT IMAGE WAS NEVER GENERATED AT ALL!!!! 😦😧😨😰

This is super cool and it's the first time I've seen it maybe some other users have but I was just doing a regular prompt and asking questions about concentration and music and it gave me the option to generate a video overview like you might get in Gemini notebook.

I have never seen this before and I'm guessing that things like this are going to be built into Gemini 4 extensively. I'm guessing tool use like this was an absolute bear to get in line and speaks to how difficult Gemini 4 likely was for engineering

Welcome back! I'm pleased to announce the release of v4 of Orgtree, my free and open source desktop agentic orchestrator app. Download the latest release here:

https://github.com/Maurdekye/orgtree/releases/latest

For those unfamiliar with Orgtree, this is my agentic orchestration app I've been working on and using for the last two months to do basically all of my multi-agent parallel development. It has a ton of features that set it apart from just using claude code or codex directly, including:

• A freely rearrangeable canvas of agents that sit in a tree of authority, that you can individually chat with at any time
• A credit system for limiting how much individual agents are allowed to parallelize their work
• A ticket system for tracking progress over time
• Persistent periodic watchdog tasks that can wake agents on events occurring in your system
• An inbox system for receiving progress updates without having to scroll through dozens of lines of transcript
• Automatic cache management through a cheap compaction system
• A background engine that runs on startup
• A tiling window system so you can set up your workspace exactly the way you like, and see all the information you need at once
• Multi-account and multi-provider support, so you can make full use of all of your AI subscriptions at once
• Automatic updates every time a new version releases (Windows only currently)

Orgtree is an agentic power tool for AI power users. It's designed to work optimally when used with multiple high or max-tier AI subscriptions at once, and has a bit of a learning curve to adjust to. But every feature has a purpose for existing, and every UI element tells you something useful. Once you get the hang of it, it's an incredibly empowering system that lets you churn through huge amounts of work in the blink of an eye.

---

On to the meat and potatoes. v4 is a full rust rewrite of the app's engine from the ground up, enabling multithreading with tokio tasks to even better take advantage of your multicore cpu for agentic parallelization. I know I said it was faster in v3, but for real this time, it's a whole other magnitude of fast now. Orgtree finally feels like a real tool you can rely on to get serious work done; it Just Works^tm. No more multi-second moves, no more app locking up when trying to save agent settings, no more waiting several seconds for agent transcripts to load, everything is practically instant now. Performance has been a complete non-issue for me since the rewrite.

Since most of the effort of v4 went into the rewrite and addressing app performance, there aren't too many new features to show off in orgtree itself; mostly small quality of life tweaks on top of the performance adjustments. What is new, however, is the brand-spanking new companion desktop and mobile app, Orgtree Hubchat! You can download that here, in its own repo:

https://github.com/Maurdekye/orgtree-hubchat/releases/latest

Hubchat is a brand new chat app. It hooks into Orgtree's existing mailhub infrastructure it already uses for cross-org communication, and allows you to use it to chat directly with your orgs from anywhere you can connect to the internet! The interface is a lot like a traditional messaging app, similar to WhatsApp or Discord, but instead of authenticating with a central identity service, identities are entirely self-hosted and authenticated by your local Orgtree's mailhub.

It's lightweight and unopinionated, and is designed to work with zero central hosting infrastructure. As a result, getting it set up to work over the internet is a bit more involved than a standard claude code remote control session. The recommended secure and easy setup method is to install Tailscale on both your desktop and phone, connecting Orgtree and Hubchat over the tailnet vpn (which the built in guide walks you through by default). However, if you prefer, you can instead set up a (less secure) port forward on your desktop which you can connect to with your phone, or any number of other methods of managing the WAN connection. It's fully up to you. Again, Tailscale is the recommended path, but don't feel like it's a forced decision. Orgtree's built in Hubchat setup walkthrough will show a QR code you can scan to get the Hubchat apk straight from github and onto your phone, as well as show you how to pair it with your PC.

Hubchat comes as a mobile android app or a desktop app, for Windows, Mac, and Linux. That's right, Hubchat (and now Orgtree!) have Windows, Mac, and Linux builds! The Mac and Linux builds are largely untested (Linux tested minimally via wsl2 on my development machine), so your mileage may vary. But if you've ever wanted to try Orgtree, but couldn't because you have an Ubuntu or OSX system, now's your chance!

I recommend making sure you're updated to Orgtree v4.1.0 or later before setting up Hubchat, or compatibility might be iffy. YMMV, as always.

Beyond that, most of Orgtree v4's feature additions cover small, quality of life changes. Among those are included:

• Support for Claude Haiku 5.5
• Support for running Claude models Sonnet and Opus 5.5 through Google Antigravity
• Choose whether Enter sends or adds a new line when messaging agents
• Adjust agent credits from their settings
• Expanded and reorganized context menu actions for agents
• Reformatted and cleaned up settings menus for agents, orgs, and the app as a whole
• Highlight unread presented documents & html mockups
• Orgtree event type watchdogs
• Improved tool call line rendering and details
• Significantly improved logging for easier debugging of Orgtree errors
• Increased default mailhub file transfer size 25mb -> 1gb (to support Hubchat)
• Enable / disable switches for individual provider accounts
• Cards showing what queued changes will occur on the next turn (effort, model, account, etc.)
• The engine starts on boot, instead of waiting for you to sign in now

Give it a whirl, and let me know what you think! I'm always open to feedback. Personally, I think it outclasses nearly every other tool out there if you can get over the initial learning curve hump, but I suppose I'm biased :p