Nvidia’s new app doesn’t require you to log in to update your GPU driver

Enlarge (credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia has announced a public beta of a new app for Windows, one that does a few useful things and one big thing.

The new app combines the functions of three apps you'd previously have to hunt through—the Nvidia Control Panel, GeForce Experience, and RTX Experience—into one app. Setting display preferences on games and seeing exactly how each notch between "Performance" and "Quality" will affect its settings is far easier and more visible inside the new app. The old-fashioned control panel is still there if you right-click the Nvidia app's notification panel icon. Installing the new beta upgrades and essentially removes the Experience and Control Panel apps, but they're still available online.

But perhaps most importantly, Nvidia's new app allows you to update the driver for your graphics card, the one you paid for, without having to log in to an Nvidia account. I tested it, it worked, and I don't know why I was surprised, but I've been conditioned that way. Given that driver updates are something people often do with new systems and the prior tendencies of Nvidia's apps to log you out, this is a boon that will pay small but notable cumulative dividends for some time to come.