I got pissed at Chrome the other day. This is not the first user-hostile thing Chrome did â off the top of my head, I remember the updater fiasco from some years ago, and the more recent auto-installation of a 4GB file â but as youâll see, this one is squarely in my wheelhouse.

The transgression: Chrome took over a shortcut on my Mac â Ctrl+G â and it used it to throw me into Chromeâs version of Gemini that I have never used or was interested in using. Moreover, it decided itâs okay for Ctrl+G to put me there even if I pressed the shortcut outside of Chrome.

I was never asked by Chrome if itâs okay to do so. The way I found itâs installed it was in a very unpleasant way: I tried to use Ctrl+G in my coding editor to jump to a specific line, and I got this instead:

Stuff like that can make you feel like you lost your mind. I have no idea what this window is supposed to do, where did it come from, or even â initially â why it appeared. Note that it doesnât even identify itself as either Chrome or Gemini, unless you read the scary caveat. It feels like the UI equivalent of breaking and entering.

Unsurprisingly, the pop-up doesnât confess to stealing the shortcut, or allow you to toggle it off in any way:

It is possible to undo that behavior, but one has to connect it to Chrome first, and then go deep into its settings â first by clicking on âAI innovations,â and then by clicking on âGemini in Chromeâ â to find it:

Letâs not beat around the bush: This is effectively malware behaviour. Itâs bullshit. Itâs cancer. Itâs deeply disrespectful toward the user. Itâs prioritizing hollow metrics at the expense of everything else.

But I donât want this blog to chase news of the day or feed the outrage machine, so let me try to turn my anger into something useful.

Letâs start here: There are some global keyboard shortcuts that are genuinely good. A video call mute shortcut, screenshotting, ânext slideâ if youâre presenting in Zoom. Everything related to computer operation â volume, brightness, media transport controls â needs to be available regardless of focus or context. (In my keyboard customization essay, I introduced my own global keyboard shortcuts, for example for scanning the next page.)

But, an app installing a global keyboard shortcut without user consent is bad. This can never be anything other than opt-in. At the very least, Chrome should have shown me a clear UI that said âWeâre thinking Ctrl+G would be fun for you to use. You okay with that?â and a button for me to press to confirm.

(Note: Ctrl+G is the shortcut for Macs. As far as I can tell, on Windows it is Alt+G.)

From peopleâs reactions, it seems this shortcut is auto-enabled for a subset of users: perhaps people who used Gemini before, or people on a plan that happens to include it. No matter how specific or small that group is, or how useful they might find the Ctrl+G pop-up, the issue remains: I have never consented to the app doing this.

I also partly blame macOS for ceding its responsibilities here. Macâs keyboard customization features are a mess, and Mac doesnât have a modern command repository. Itâs not just that apps can register global shortcuts as they want, without the user knowing. Itâs also that there is no shared inventory of them; if an app âswallowsâ a shortcut but does nothing noticeable with it, it can be really hard to figure out why a shortcut seemingly just stops working.

(Other apps that I remember having problems with âstealingâ global shortcuts, and apps that a few readers posted are: 1Password, Notion, and Perplexity. Iâd be curious if you have other examples!)

In light of macOSâs deficiencies, as an app, if you offer any shortcut customization â especially if you allow global shortcuts â I think itâs important to have a page that lists all of them shortcuts in one place. This is not what Chrome does, as various shortcut options are hidden on various pages in settings. Even Zoom, which is not generally known for having a great user interface, does better here:

And, since weâre back to Chrome, what a fall from grace! When Chrome started in the late 2000s, it felt like a browser that had userâs interest in mind, and protected people from ill-behaving websites. Today, itâs the operating system that needs to protect us from Chrome.

Also, donât call a tab âAI innovations.â Itâs tacky as hell. The market gets to decide whatâs innovative and what is not.