← Back to search

NEW Hermes Desktop App is Insane (FREE)!

AI News Today | Julian Goldie Podcast · 2026-06-03 · 13 min
relevance 100 3084 words Episode page ↗ Audio ↗
Show full episode description
Hermes Desktop App Released: Install, Features, Settings, Tools & What’s Missing Hermes has released a free official Hermes Desktop app bundled with Hermes Agent for Windows, Linux, and macOS, adding persistent memory, focused automation, web browsing, sandboxing, multi-tasking, and centralized conversations across platforms. The script walks through installing from the website, starting and pinning sessions, and configuring settings such as context window, model selection (e.g., Minimax M3), chat personality, appearance/themes, workspace options, persistent memory, and context compression thresholds. It also covers voice options and providers (xAI, ElevenLabs, OpenAI), gateway/API management for models and tools, and toggling skills/tools (including smart home controls). The reviewer notes drawbacks like poor artifact/file preview (opening in an external editor), incomplete session sync, missing Kanban-style mission control, and voice permissions/integration issues, while emphasizing it’s easier than terminal use and improved over prior unofficial desktop versions.
✨ Episode Outline — click any point to jump to it in the episode
Problem solved
Reviews the new free Hermes Desktop app and how it makes agents easier than the terminal.
Benefits
  • Free desktop app for Windows, Linux, Mac OS
  • All conversations and platforms in one place
  • Customizable models, voice, APIs, themes
  • Persistent memory and context compression
  • Easier than terminal for non-technical users
Use cases
  • Plug in Minimax M3 and switch models per session, search, or MCP
  • Voice provider choice across XAI, 11labs, OpenAI; clone own voice via 11labs
  • Smart home skill controls room lights via Hermes agent
  • Agent OS demo auto-generates SEO meta descriptions for new pages
  • Kanban mission delegates tasks to sub-agents (missing in desktop)
KPIs / results
  • Available on Windows, Linux, Mac OS
  • Chat reply took about 5 seconds
  • 256k token context window example for smaller models
Tools / build
0:00 / 0:00
📑 Chapters — tap a time to jump there
00:00
Hermes Desktop Launch
  • New free Hermes Desktop for Windows, Linux, Mac
00:38
Download and Install
  • Download from site; auto-detects install location
01:19
Settings and Customization
  • Change context window, models, personality, dark mode themes
02:27
Voice and API Options
  • Pick voice provider: XAI, 11labs, OpenAI
  • Manage APIs for models and tools
03:16
Why Desktop Beats Terminal
  • Desktop easier than terminal for managing models and APIs
04:04
Artifacts and Sync Issues
  • Artifacts open in VS Code, can't preview
  • Sessions don't fully sync
05:23
Skills and Smart Home Tools
  • Toggle skills and tools like Kanban, smart home lights
05:50
Testing Chat and Voice
  • Chat works; voice integration needs permissions, not smooth
07:05
Missing Kanban Workflow
  • Desktop lacks Kanban sub-agent delegation
07:37
How Hermes Desktop Works
  • Hermes lives on your machine, not just a chat tab
08:55
Agents Made Simple
  • Four-loop: offload, orchestrate, optimize, stack agents
10:15
Desktop vs Agent OS
  • Agent OS is more customizable command center than desktop
11:31
Implementation Tips and Recap
  • Desktop simple to try; Agent OS unlocks full power
12:32
Community and Full Guide
  • Full guide and setup in AI Profit Boardroom
13:22
Final Goodbye
  • Closing thanks
Today we have a brand new update from Hermes as they've released their new desktop and you can see it installed right here. So this is a free desktop app that comes directly with Hermes Agent. You can see it's available on Windows, Linux and Mac OS right now. Lives everywhere, it's got persistent memory, focused automation as well. You can actually browse the web with it. It's got isolated sandboxing and you can multiply your tasks with Hermes Agent. So today I'm going to walk you through exactly how to use it, what it is, why it works, what the point of it is and some cool stuff plus what it looks like. So let's have a look. This is Hermes Agent with desktop. Now if you want to get it installed you can just go to their website here and then you can download it. Now it will actually automatically detect where to install it to. So for me for example it recommends using this on Mac OS. Now you can see an example of how it's been used here. So you've got all of your conversations in one place across multiple platforms. So that's pretty useful. And then you can ask it to go off and start doing things as well. It can also call tools. So for example what you can see is that it can use the eugenic features of Hermes Agent inside the desktop app. And then we can go inside here and use it directly. It was pretty quick to install to be fair. And you can also pin sessions. So we can see all of our previous sessions here and then we can pin stuff too. Then we can go to a new session. We've also got some options for our settings. So inside the settings section you can actually change the context window. You can change which model you're using with your agents. So you can see I've plugged in Minimax M3. You can change the models that you use for each. So for example like session searches or MCP and that sort of thing. And then you've got different options. For example like the chat. You can actually change the personality. So you can have helpful concise. Reminds. It feels like they're trying to do something similar to what Claude Desktop have done. But for Hermes Agent. And then you can switch between these different options right here. You've got the appearance options. So you can switch to dark mode. Which I think is probably better to be fair. And then you can change the theme of this as well. So we can change to midnight for example. Over here we've got the workspace options. And these are just some ways that you can basically customize this as much as you want. We have the options for example for the user profile. Persistent memory. Then we have the context engine. So how that works. Basically whether you want it to automatically compress the conversations that you have. So that it doesn't run out of context window. Depending on what model you have. If you're running like a smaller model with a 256k token context window. Then that's probably better for you. And then you've got the threshold here in terms of like when should it compress. Over here you can change the voice. So we can select which voice we want to use. Now you can switch between what type of provider you want as well. So you could use like XAI. You could use 11labs. You could use OpenAI for your voice responses. You could actually switch off. Switch to text if you want to. And then additionally you can change the models down here too. So one thing that would be pretty cool with this is like you could actually change the 11labs voice to like my own voice. That I've plugged into 11labs. And then it could respond with my own voice. Which is pretty weird and interesting at the same time. So over here you can change the gateways. You've got APIs as well. And so you can select your APIs. Switch between APIs. Change the models. And then there's APIs not just for the models inside Hermes. But you can manage the APIs inside the tools as well. So one thing that's really good about this is like if you've ever done the old way. Which is you go into Terminal here. You get Hermes agent running like. And you can't really customize anything right. And also 99% of people are just not going to use the terminal. It's not very useful. It's kind of too technical for most people. And also you can't manage like models, the APIs. You can with some terminal commands. But most people don't even know the terminal commands in the first place. So how to type them in. So it is better to have a desktop like this. It's great for you. I can see what they're doing. Because they've already become the most popular AI agent in the world. If you look at OpenRouter and the usage of which APIs are being used across these agents. And so if they've made it even easier and less technical to use AI agents like Hermes. Then it just grows. It expands. More people use it. Right. So that's obviously what they're doing here. And it's smart. It's smart. And it also makes it just easier and more fun to use your AI agents. Now you'll see over here, this is a section where you've got basically your artifacts. So things you have created. Now one thing that I will say about this is not great. It's like you've got your files and everything else like this. But if you actually click on them and you want to view something like this and preview it. You'll see that it opens up. But it will open up in like this sort of a Visual Studio Code here. Or whatever you use as default to open up like a .md file. The problem with that is that you can't really preview the things that you've done properly. So I'll give you an example. If we go over to my agent OS system. If I'm like trying to preview things that I've created. I can easily just go in the studio. I can see the videos. I can see the voice. I can see the images that I've created here. I can switch between Grok and Minimax. Which is pretty cool. Right. Whereas for example if you go into the Hermes desktop app over here. You can't really preview what you've created. You can't see it in the same way. And it's just not as easy to organize. So I think there's going to be a lot of improvements coming for this as well. You can switch between your different messaging apps here as well. Which is pretty cool. So you can sync these. The other thing that I've noticed here. Is like it's not synced everything inside my sessions. So I'll give you an example. So if we go over to for example my sessions inside here. And the chat for example. It doesn't sync that well with Hermes desktop. So I think it does miss some things. Or it's just not covering all the conversations previously. Over here you can manage your skills and your tools. And you can toggle them on and off. So for example let's say you've got a skill. I don't know like Kanban. You can toggle that on and off here if you want to switch it off. And you can select between different ones as well. Which is pretty cool. So you can like. What's interesting here is you can see. You can get some skills for example like smart home. Where you can actually control the lights in your rooms with your Hermes agent. Which is interesting as well. So it links to the offline world. And then you have your normal sort of session followed. Now let's just give this a test to see if it works. I'm interested to see if it's actually going to be responsive. And also how fast it's going to be when it comes to using this. So it took about yeah five seconds to reply there. I don't know if it's slightly slower inside here. Let's see what else we got. So we have this option too. Which is a start. We can start a voice conversation with it. And then we've got voice dictation as well. And then we can attach files and folders and that sort of thing. Right. So let's try the voice agent. Just see if we can speak to our agent. Oh look at that. Yeah so you need to give permissions to it. But it doesn't give me the option to add permissions. So I would say it doesn't integrate that well. Let me give you an example what it should look like. So for example if we go into my agent OS system here. And we're like okay let's just have a conversation with Hermes. So if I'm like okay let's click on this. Are you working? What's on your mind? What do you think we could automate today? Like one simple thing around maybe SEO. I could whip up a script that auto generates meta descriptions for new pages on your site. Pulling key points from the content. So you see how smooth and fast that is. That's what you want. Right. Whereas for example you go over to Hermes desktop. Doesn't seem to work that smoothly with the voice integration there. Even though it should because Minimax is pretty powerful for that. So just some things to be aware of there. Like you can't preview the markdown files. The messaging is pretty good. The skills bit is pretty good. But also another thing that I would say here is like they should have a section here for Kanban. Right. I'll give you an example here. So if we go over to Kanban here. I can plug in a mission. And then my AI agents will delegate that to sub-agents. And it will just go off and implement tasks. Whereas for example inside the desktop. You can't really do that. So there's some things missing here. But again it's pretty cool. It's a great idea. I think it does make it easier. And more powerful. And also much easier to manage in the terminal. So it is good. If you're thinking about using it. It's worth checking out. Let me talk you through exactly what it means. How it works etc. So this is basically now making sure that Hermes desktop with Hermes desktop. It can live on your machine. Right. So most AI sits in a terminal window or a browser tab and waits. Hermes is a bit different because it's now working inside Hermes desktop. Right. And so it's no longer just like a chat where you go back and forth with it. You can manage things in a big app. Now there were some alternatives to this as well. Like Hermes desktop. And obviously you've got agent OS as well. What I would say with Hermes desktop previously when I've tried that out which was another open source project. It didn't sync as well as this Hermes version. So I think you'll see this has been released by News Research officially. So I would say this is better than the previous version of Hermes desktop that I've tested out. It syncs a lot better. It just seems to work nicer etc. And so it's a pretty cool system. It can do a lot of cool things. I do love the fact that you can manage it and that sort of thing. And the way that I look at this is it works in a four system loop. So you offload. You can hand one task to an agent. You can orchestrate it so you can let it actually run between your subagents. Like we were talking about with the Kanban board here. Or if you're using Hermes desktop you can actually see there's a section for subagents inside here. And then you've got the optimization process where you can save your skills and it remembers sessions for next time. And then from there you can stack more agents in and have a team and that sort of thing. At this point what's cool about all of this is that some people say agents are too technical for me. Absolutely not. At this point you don't even need to open up a terminal anymore. I've seen plenty of people build their own mission controls and their own systems from AI Profit Boardroom members. So I would say if you're thinking about using AI agents, you've never used Hermes before or maybe you tried it and you found it too difficult to use. Definitely try again because it's easier than ever before to use these AI agents. And they're smoother as well. This is a lot. Hermes in general is just a lot smoother than OpenCore. And the right belief here is if you can text a friend, you can run an AI agent. Other people say, do I have to watch the agent constantly? I would say the right belief here is that you can run on a schedule, it can report back to you so you don't need to monitor it constantly. And also other people say, this is hype that won't work for me. But if you really look at the power of what you can do with Hermes agent, it's more powerful than anything we've ever seen. For example, here, you can have a live voice call with your AI agents. You can generate images, videos, voice. You can manage all of your sessions. You've got this autonomous goal mode that can run for hours just by setting Hermes agent a goal. And then also we've got other stuff like we've got a video agent built into the agent OS system. We have the Kanban board and everything else. So at this point, it's not hype anymore. Normal people are already doing this and it's creating amazing stuff. Now, you might say, okay, do I need an agent operating system? Maybe some of you have built out one or you're using one already. Or should you switch to Hermes desktop, which is a great question. So Hermes desktop alone is one brilliant agent. But I would say an agent operating system is really the command center that can run Hermes and multiple other agents. So if you look, for example, inside Hermes desktop, number one, you can't preview anything. Number two, you can't really do the voice chat. From what I've seen so far, that doesn't seem to be working. And additionally, it doesn't feel that nice. It's not like you feel amazing when you use it. Whereas, for example, if you use something like an agent OS system, like you can see right here. Look how beautiful it looks. Look how interesting it is. Look how you can plug in Claude and OpenClaw and Hermes and Gemini and Antigravity into everything. And also, it's a lot more customizable when you build out an agent operating system. So Hermes desktop is great. It's this thing that you might try and then you test it out. It's very simplified. But honestly, if you want to unlock the full power of AI agents, then I would use something like an agent operating system. Because it's just far more customizable and more powerful. And you can just control all your agents in one place in a way that looks and feels nice. So Hermes is like a brilliant employee, but an agent operating system is like the entire company around it. Right? Now, if I was to implement this, I would just pick one thing that you don't like doing. Give your agent the context. Describe the task and just let it run and then save that as a skill and put it on a schedule. Right? If you want to get the most out of it. Hermes can implement one thing today. And that's basically it. So just to recap, Hermes is an open source AI agent. You can now run it on Hermes desktop. This is a powerful desktop application. Definitely better than the terminal interface. Would I switch from an agent operating system back to Hermes desktop? Absolutely not. Because I just want to unlock the full power of my AI agents. And also I want to have all my agents in one place. I'll give you an example. Right? So earlier today, Claude actually just released and CLI. And we can just build that straight into the agent operating system, which is what we've done over here. Right? So that sort of customization, you're not going to get with the Hermes desktop application. And also you're not going to have a beautiful studio where you can talk to your agents and you can create all sorts of cool stuff like you've seen here. So thanks very much for watching. If you want to get my full guide to Hermes desktop, you can get it inside the AI path of boarding. We've got a 30-day roadmap, 100 prompts for Hermes desktop, and also a SAP for implementing it step-by-step. This is my community with 3,300 business owners who are also automating and scaling with AI. You can also connect with me personally inside here. You can ask questions, get help and support as well from members. There's 100 people online right now, for example. So you can see there's people online 24-7 ready to help. Inside the calendar, you can jump a week to the coaching course. If you want my full agent operating system, we've actually got it inside here. And we update this daily. So you can see the last update date. You also get the zip file, so you can just install this directly. And we also add new daily tutorials and all of the stuff that comes out for Hermes or any other AI agents that are actually useful. So feel free to get that link in the comments description or go to the AIprofitboarding.com. Thanks for watching. I'll see you on the next one. Cheers. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.