Nvidia bids goodbye to GeForce Experience — Nvidia App officially replaces it in the latest driver update

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It's time to move on to a newer, better driver app.

Nvidia App
(Image credit: Nvidia)

GeForce Experience is notably missing in Nvidia’s latest driver update—Nvidia Graphics Driver Version 566.36—while the Nvidia app takes its place when you look at the driver components.

The AI and graphics card company wanted to unify all GPU-related controls to the new Nvidia app, replacing GeForce Experience and the Nvidia Control Panel. It has worked on the app since early 2024 until it finally left beta last November 12. With this driver update, the company has officially ceased support for the legacy GeForce Experience app, and it will also eventually deprecate the ancient Nvidia Control Panel after it transfers all functionality to the new app.

The Nvidia app combines everything, allowing you to launch games, update drivers, make changes to your graphics settings on a global scale or a per-app basis, tweak your system, and even redeem rewards in one place. It lets you discover other Nvidia services, like GeForce Now, Nvidia Broadcast, and Nvidia Canvas, on the Home tab. However, although some system settings have already been migrated to the new app, a few advanced options, like Nvidia Surround, are only available on the Nvidia Control Panel, so you shouldn’t remove that from your PC yet.

When you press Alt + Z with the Nvidia app, you also get an updated overlay. The old options menu that covers the top of your screen is gone in favor of a sidebar that shows several options, including Record, Screenshot, Instant Replay, Photo Mode, and Highlights. Aside from that, it now captures your screen with AV1 120 FPS recording, allowing you to record your in-game achievements with the best possible quality and smoothness.

Overall, this new app doesn’t feel that different from the old GeForce Experience app, but it installs and loads much faster and gives you a couple of extra features. More than that, it puts all your customization options in one window, allowing you to easily tweak settings without opening another window or digging through the Nvidia Control Panel’s dated user interface. Another thing that the more privacy-minded gamer would like is that the Nvidia app does away with the mandatory Nvidia account signup. So, even if you don’t have an Nvidia account, you can use it to manage your system and even get automatic driver updates.

Jowi Morales
Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • emike09
    Never liked GeForce Experience and always did a custom install to not include it. The required login was a no-go for me, mostly because it seemed like almost every driver update, I had to log in again and that was annoying, especially since it was a service that didn't justify an online login. On top of that, it was a clunky and annoying interface that I simply didn't need. I don't want my games 'auto-optimized'. I want to optimize them myself. The Nvidia Control Panel also provided all the tools I needed already, even though it was an unoptimized applications.

    The Nvidia App is a step in the right direction. I still find myself going to the Nvidia Control Panel for various things because it feels easier there, but I like the features the new app brings. The biggest issue I run into now is the Nvidia Overlay often doesn't work well with many games, simply not showing up for features like RTX HDR.

    On the note of HDR through, RTX Video HDR now has 4 levels of intensity, while the Control Panel was simply On/Off. A setting of 4 is a bit too much on my Samsung S95B OLED TV for most YT videos. I've set it to 3, which seems a bit stronger than the On option in the Control Panel.
    Reply
  • Giroro
    I'm not comfortable with a graphics driver utility pushing "rewards".
    But I'm also not comfortable with how Nvidia's app apparently tracks an unacceptable amount of user data (complete record of installed software per user, exactly when each is used, how it performed, etc) and sends it back to Nvidia to do anything they want with.

    On the other hand if I ever get falsely accused of the crime, there's some comfort knowing I can potentially sue Nvidia to get record of an ironclad alibi.
    But not literally though. Because I'm pretty every time anybody sits down at a PC with an Nvidia driver installed, they count that as signing an arbitration agreement that prevents you from suing them for any reason, forever.
    Reply
  • txfeinbergs
    I have been wanting to try this but have been waiting for it to come out of Beta, only now to be waiting because of the number of bugs people are complaining about in the Nvidia forums, including that it breaks Microsoft Onedrive syncing which would be a deal killer for me.
    Reply
  • hennes
    emike09 said:
    Never liked GeForce Experience and always did a custom install to not include it. The required login was a no-go for me, mostly because it seemed like almost every driver update, I had to log in again and that was annoying, especially since it was a service that didn't justify an online login. On top of that, it was a clunky and annoying interface that I simply didn't need. I don't want my games 'auto-optimized'. I want to optimize them myself. The Nvidia Control Panel also provided all the tools I needed already, even though it was an unoptimized applications.

    The Nvidia App is a step in the right direction. I still find myself going to the Nvidia Control Panel for various things because it feels easier there, but I like the features the new app brings. The biggest issue I run into now is the Nvidia Overlay often doesn't work well with many games, simply not showing up for features like RTX HDR.

    On the note of HDR through, RTX Video HDR now has 4 levels of intensity, while the Control Panel was simply On/Off. A setting of 4 is a bit too much on my Samsung S95B OLED TV for most YT videos. I've set it to 3, which seems a bit stronger than the On option in the Control Panel.
    ^^This^^

    I used to have Nvia card (780, 1080). There is a new version of gforce experience. Download?

    Y -> you need to log in. F! that. I am not deinstalling all graphics drivers (+surplus), downloading a whole new package and reinstalling just to get around needing no account. No more Nvidia for me.

    Ofcourse that is easy if you do not happen to need CUDA, but the effort they went though to push people away from their own brand is remarkable
    Reply
  • 8086
    hennes said:
    ^^This^^

    I used to have Nvia card (780, 1080). There is a new version of gforce experience. Download?

    Y -> you need to log in. F! that. I am not deinstalling all graphics drivers (+surplus), downloading a whole new package and reinstalling just to get around needing no account. No more Nvidia for me.

    Ofcourse that is easy if you do not happen to need CUDA, but the effort they went though to push people away from their own brand is remarkable
    Maybe it's time to go AMD or Intel.
    Reply
  • Mama Changa
    I bid farewell over 4 years ago. Nvidia is just late to the party. I only download the debloated driver package with no GeFarce bloatware.
    Reply
  • Ogotai
    i just unchecked that box... no geforce experience, no log ins....
    Reply
  • erazog
    Nvidia continue to send data telemetry after installing their drivers with no opt-out so I would not consider their software privacy minded.

    AMD is the only vendor to the best of my knowledge that actually lets you turn the data collection off.

    At least for Windows, if on Linux then you have the open source drivers free from this.
    Reply
  • KyaraM
    That was done durjng the previous driver update, though, not the one from this week. You are a little late here...
    Reply
  • txfeinbergs
    KyaraM said:
    That was done durjng the previous driver update, though, not the one from this week. You are a little late here...
    No it wasn't. The last driver I downloaded (the one before this newest one), still offered Geforce Experience as the optional install. I thought that was rather weird since they had just finished the beta for it.
    Reply