Bing Chat goes beyond the browser and gets turbocharged with BingGPT
The dev community comes up with the goods once again.
There are a few ways to use Bing Chat right now, whether on desktop or mobile, but one gap is the lack of a desktop app. That's not unsurprising since Microsoft is building it into Windows 11. But if you'd love a desktop client, you can already, albeit unofficially, have one.
It's called BingGPT and is built by GitHub user dice2o. There's no trickery or reverse engineering going on. It's essentially a wrapper around the web view. But it's not just a wrapper around the web view. BingGPT adds some features you don't get from the official browser version of Bing Chat, making it even more user-friendly.
And it's also available on Mac and Linux if you're so inclined (it's even compiled for Windows on ARM).
BingGPT adds exporting and keyboard shortcuts to Bing Chat
My only real complaint with Bing Chat is that there's no built-in way to save your chats for future reference as you have with ChatGPT. There are browser extensions to help, but BingGPT goes even further.
Built-in it has options to export your entire threads as either a Markdown file, a PNG image, or a PDF. This is better even than the mobile Bing apps, which will share as an image but only the part of the screen you're currently looking at. In the context menu, you can export any of your Bing Chat threads as any of these file types, and each of them works perfectly.
Additional features include adjustable text size, though this doesn't work on the Compose tab, a quick switch between dark and light themes, or the option to follow your system. You also have a comprehensive set of keyboard shortcuts that, again, you don't get in the browser because they would conflict with existing ones.
The performance is the same as using Bing Chat in the browser, too. It's just, well, not in the browser. The Sidebar in Microsoft Edge is still my favorite place to use Bing Chat because it's the most convenient. Still, given the export feature alone, I think I found my new favorite way to have more extended discussions with the chatbot.
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Grab it now for Windows, Mac, and Linux from the BingGPT GitHub repo.
Richard Devine is a Managing Editor at Windows Central with over a decade of experience. A former Project Manager and long-term tech addict, he joined Mobile Nations in 2011 and has been found on Android Central and iMore as well as Windows Central. Currently, you'll find him steering the site's coverage of all manner of PC hardware and reviews. Find him on Mastodon at mstdn.social/@richdevine