Perplexity's Desktop App Is Here, but You Should Stick to the Web App for Now

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Published Mar 19, 2025

From PlayStations to MacBooks, consumer tech has always been a part of Danny's life. Having started writing for MUO in December 2020, his main tech-related interest focuses on Apple products and creative software like Adobe Lightroom.

Danny's writing credentials are wide and varied, including a poem he had published in a book at age nine and a Sports Journalism degree from a UK university. Danny enjoys CrossFit while away from the keyboard (and naturally measures his health progress on his Apple Watch and iPhone). He has expertise in marketing and photography.

In addition to writing for MUO, Danny shares his art on Instagram and runs a website sharing travel tips for people traveling to Northern Europe.

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It's been a long time coming, but you can now download Perplexity on your macOS or Windows machine. As a long-term Perplexity Pro user, I've been waiting for this moment for some time—but have come away really quite disappointed.

3 You Get Nothing Different

Despite the hype on social media, Perplexity's desktop app offers no unique advantages. It offers the same features as the browser version, and it is less time-consuming to open your web browser and search for what you need. It's actually what's known as an Electron wrapper, which is a way developers can "wrap" a web application to allow it to run as a desktop program.

However, Perplexity hasn't added anything specific to the desktop version. It's literally just the wrapper. If Perplexity introduced alternative features, the desktop app might be worth downloading. For example, Perplexity couldexpand its social search capabilities. But until then, you're wasting your time.

2 The Desktop App Is Harder to Use

Perplexity's browser app offers an excellent user experience, but there's always room for improvement. Launching a desktop app allows Perplexity to fine-tune its search tools for a particular operating system, but that has not been the case.

The desktop app is less intuitive than the browser version. You can see all of your conversations on the left-hand side without clicking on anything in your browser, but this is not the case in the desktop app. Your chats are instead hidden behind the tab on the left.

The Perplexity desktop app interface — Screenshot by Danny Maiorca from Perplexity for macOS

While not a huge issue, this can initially be frustrating. A better interface would be ideal for helping peopleget more out of a Perplexity Pro subscription while simultaneously benefiting free users.

1 Poor Responsiveness

In addition to being harder to use, the Perplexity desktop app doesn't have the same responsiveness. Whereas the browser version normally loads quite quickly, Perplexity for desktop often feels like it's lagging.

Because of this lag, the overall in-app experience is automatically worse. While Perplexity will hopefully fix this issue over time, it's still something to consider.

Perplexity's desktop app has a lot of potential, but in its current state, there is no reason to download it. The app feels clunky and lacks useful features that are available in the browser version. You're better off using the web app.

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