Improving navigation in long Google AI Studio chats with a userscript

Source: Dev.to

Overview

Working with long chat sessions in Google AI Studio exposes several usability issues, including inefficient navigation, loss of context, and limited keyboard control.

To address this, I wrote a userscript that adds navigation and keyboard‑focused controls on top of the existing interface. The goal was to improve day‑to‑day usability by layering additional controls on top of the existing UI.

Features

• Navigation bar in the chat footer with buttons to jump to the Previous, Next, First, and Last message.
• Message index menu listing all conversation turns with text previews, toggled via the counter button or Alt + M.
• Dropdown controls to adjust font size and increase chat container width.
• Injected buttons in code headers to jump to the top or bottom of code snippets.
• Floating scroll indicator showing the current message number and percentage while scrolling.
• Keyboard shortcuts for chat interaction without a mouse, including:
  • Alt + PgUp / PgDn – navigate messages
  • Shift + Alt + PgUp / PgDn – jump to start/end of the conversation
  • Alt + M – toggle the message index menu
  • Alt + P – focus the prompt input
  • Alt + - / = – adjust font size
  • Shift + Alt + - / = – adjust chat width

All logic runs locally in the browser; the script does not send or collect any data.

Installation

The script is available on GreasyFork:

QuickNav for Google AI Studio

Usage

1. Open a Google AI Studio chat.
2. The new navigation bar appears at the bottom of the chat window.
3. Use the on‑screen buttons or the keyboard shortcuts listed above to move through the conversation, adjust the UI, or focus the input field.
4. Press Alt + M (or click the counter button) to open the message index menu, where you can preview and jump to any turn in the conversation.

Feedback and suggestions are welcome.