Microsoft is testing an advanced AI version of Bing, partially based on ChatGPT technology, called “the new Bing.” It’s normally locked to Microsoft Edge, but there are hidden ways to use it in Google Chrome as well.
The new Bing is accessible through bing.com, but it’s blocked for all web browsers except Microsoft Edge. When you open it in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or other browsers, you get a message telling you to “Unlock conversational search on Microsoft Edge.” Thankfully, like most browser-specific blocking mechanisms, it can be overridden by changing the browser’s user agent — you don’t even need a special extension.
There are also other ways of using the new Bing in other browsers without any special hacks, which we’ll go over first. As a reminder, these steps will only work if you already have access to the new Bing. If you’re still on the waitlist, this won’t work for you.
Use Bing AI Chat in Skype Web
The easiest method of using Bing in any modern web browser, including Google Chrome, is to use it from within Skype. To get started, open web.skype.com in your browser, and log in with any Microsoft account with access to Bing AI. Adding Skype as a bookmark or pinning the tab can reduce the time it takes to open again.
After you open Skype, click the search box at the top-left corner of the window, as seen below.
Bing should appear near the bottom of the search pane. Click on it to add it to your chats list.
You should now see Bing in your list of chats. You can click on it to start sending messages, just like regular contacts in Skype. If you have push notifications enabled in the web app, you’ll get alerts as Bing types, as well as notifications on any other devices that have Skype installed with the same Microsoft account.
This version of Bing doesn’t require any hacks, but it’s not the same exact experience as the Bing site. For example, the version on Bing’s site can properly display tables and code blocks, while they often appear broken in the Skype version. You also don’t get the auto-reply buttons in Skype.
If you want the full-featured version and not the slightly limited Skype version, read on.
Use Bing AI on Windows with Chrome
There are some Chrome extensions that can modify the current user agent, even on a per-site basis, but that comes with potential privacy issues. Chrome has hidden command-line arguments for changing the user agent, which work well on Mac, but requires Chrome to be completely closed first on Windows. We’ll explain how to do that first—and then show a better method.
First, you need to create a shortcut to Google Chrome on the desktop. On Windows 11, open the Start Menu (not the search), click “All Apps,” find Chrome in the list, and then drag it to an empty space on the desktop. The process is almost identical for Windows 10, but the app list doesn’t require an extra click.
Right-click on the new shortcut, and then select Properties. In the “Target” text field, add a space after the existing text, and then paste this afterward:
"https://www.bing.com/search?q=Bing+AI&showconv=1&FORM=hpcodx" --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/110.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/110.0.1587.57"
The full “Target” string should look something like this:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" "https://www.bing.com/search?q=Bing+AI&showconv=1&FORM=hpcodx" --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/110.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/110.0.1587.57"
Click ‘OK’ on the Properties window to save your changes, then double-click on it to open Chrome with Bing. Again, this only works if Chrome isn’t already running on your PC. This also sets your browser’s user agent to Microsoft Edge until you quit Chrome and re-open it as normal from the Start Menu.
The best solution here is to create a shortcut that opens Bing in a minimal Edge window, giving you easy access to Bing but without the clutter of the Edge experience. If you’re on Windows 11, open the Start Menu (not the search), click “All Apps,” find Chrome in the list, and then drag it to an empty space on the desktop. The process is almost identical for Windows 10, but the app list doesn’t require an extra click.
Right-click on the new shortcut, and then select Properties. In the “Target” text field, add a space after the existing text, and then paste this afterwards:
--app="https://www.bing.com/search?q=Bing+AI&showconv=1&FORM=hpcodx"
The full target string should look something like this:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe" --app="https://www.bing.com/search?q=Bing+AI&showconv=1&FORM=hpcodx"
Now, rename the shortcut to something like “Bing,” and double-click on it to open. You should see the Bing chat in its own window. The taskbar icon even changes to a search icon!
The Edge-based shortcut isn’t quite the same thing as running Bing in Chrome, but it’s easy enough to switch between the Bing window and your Chrome session as needed.
Use Bing AI on Mac with Chrome
There are some Chrome extensions that can modify the current user agent, even on a per-site basis, but that comes with potential privacy issues. You can use simple terminal commands to start Chrome with a different user agent, though, and you can even give Bing its own app-like window while you’re at it.
The Mac has several built-in methods for running a terminal command with one click, but we’ll use Automator for this example. First, open Automator by searching for it in Spotlight (the magnifying glass icon at the top-right of the menu bar) or finding it in the Launchpad.
Next, with Automator open, click “New Document” in the file browser that appears. You can also select File > New in the menu bar. Automator will ask you what type of document you would like to create. Select “Application” as the type and then click “Choose” to confirm.
Automator is normally used for multi-step automations and workflows, but we only need to use one action. Type for “shell” in the search box at the top-left, and when you see “Run Shell Script,” double-click it to add it to the workflow.
The “Run Shell Script” action has a text box for the script. Delete all the text in the box, then paste this:
open -n -a "Google Chrome" --args "https://www.bing.com/search?q=Bing+AI&showconv=1&FORM=hpcodx" --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/112.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/112.0.0.0"
That command opens the Bing AI chat page in Google Chrome on your Mac, but it does so using a Microsoft Edge user agent string instead of the default Chrome agent string. That’s enough to fool Bing’s website into thinking you’re using Edge.
If you want Bing to run in a separate app window without any tabs or other Chrome elements visible, delete everything in the text box and put this instead:
open -n -a "Google Chrome" --args --app="https://www.bing.com/search?q=Bing+AI&showconv=1&FORM=hpcodx" --app-window-size=1200,600 --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/112.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/112.0.0.0"
After that, you can click the Run button at the top-right corner of Automator to see if it works. Bing Chat should open in a new Chrome tab, or if you used the second format, it should open in a dedicated window.
Now you can save the workflow. In the menu bar, go to File > Save (or press Command + S on your keyboard) and give it a name, like Bing. Automator usually saves workflows to iCloud by default, but you can also store it in another location. If you store it in your Mac’s Applications folder, it will also appear in the Launchpad.
Since the workflow is an application, you can drag it from the Finder to your Mac dock for easy access. Now you have Bing in Chrome just one click away! You can also change the app’s icon to the Bing logo for a bit of extra polish.
There is one minor catch to this method — this will change the user agent for the entire current Chrome session, so any pages you load after opening Bing will also have an Edge user agent. If you notice sites breaking or telling you to install Google Chrome, quitting and re-opening the browser will reset the user agent back to the default. You can also work around this by installing Chrome Beta, and changing “Google Chrome” in the command to “Google Chrome Beta”.
