Google wants to weave its AI ecosystem into every corner of your daily web browsing. If you frequently use the tech to summarize dense articles or explain complex terms, a massive quality-of-life upgrade might be heading to your desktop soon. Google is currently testing an elegant floating text-selection menu that drastically cuts down the time it takes to feed web information into the Gemini side panel.
As spotted in early desktop test builds, this experimental feature completely changes how the browser interacts with highlighted copy. Instead of forcing you to right-click or manually copy-paste sentences into a separate tab, Chrome introduces a small, smart contextual prompt directly above your cursor the moment you finish selecting one.
Using Gemini-powered AI to streamline your digital research on Chrome
According to Windows Report, this feature eliminates several annoying micro-steps from your workflow. The floating menu contains a prominent “Ask Gemini” button alongside traditional utility shortcuts for copying and sharing content.
The real magic happens behind the scenes. Instead of just opening an assistant, clicking the shortcut instantly duplicates your selected passage and drops it directly into the browser’s native Gemini sidebar. From there, the AI sets up a contextual prompt, allowing you to ask follow-up questions or request quick summaries without losing your place on the webpage.
Internal Chromium code references discovered by developers show that Google officially calls this UI addition the “Inline Cue Menu.” To make sure this floating bubble does not turn into an annoying distraction, the development team included a three-dot settings menu. This gives users the option to select “Hide for this site,” which completely blocks the pop-up on specific domains where you just want a distraction-free reading experience.
An ecosystem-wide push
The real magic happens behind the scenes. Instead of just opening an assistant, clicking the shortcut instantly duplicates your selected passage and drops it directly into the browser’s native Gemini sidebar. From there, the AI sets up a contextual prompt. This allows you to ask follow-up questions or request quick summaries without losing your place on the webpage.
As with any project discovered inside Chrome Canary, there are a few caveats to keep in mind. The feature is still in its absolute infancy. While the core action of sending text to the side panel functions reliably, the surrounding settings pages and exception lists remain largely unfinished. Google has not publicly announced a formal rollout schedule yet, and experimental features can occasionally disappear entirely before reaching stable builds.
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