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.
