Perplexity’s Comet is Chrome with agentic AI powers. On paper, it can manage your email and calendar, create drafts, help with shopping, automate mundane work tasks, and assist with everything you can do on the web.
But does it translate to real-world use cases? I spent over a month with Comet as my default browser to see if it could replace Edge as my daily driver. For the most part, yes—it can replace my current Chromium browser. But there are trade-offs you need to consider.
Comet is currently available to Perplexity Max subscribers, select Perplexity Pro subscribers, and by invitation from the waiting list.
What can Comet do?
A browser with Perplexity’s AI answer engine at its core
Since Comet is essentially a Chromium browser, switching from Edge was easy. When I first launched it, Comet automatically prompted me to import my browser data. Bookmarks, passwords, extensions—everything came over in one click. The interface, settings, and extensions all worked exactly as expected.
However, what makes Comet different is Perplexity’s AI answer engine at its core, not just added as a sidebar or pop-up, but integrated into how the browser works. By default, Comet uses Perplexity as the search engine, but you can change it to your preferred search provider from the settings.
Comet Assistant handles the agentic part of the web browser. You can browse the web like a regular browser, press Ctrl + A to launch Assistant, and ask it to take action depending on the context.
For instance, if you’re logged into your email account, you can ask it to summarize a specific email, draft a reply, or schedule an event. If you’re on YouTube, Comet Assistant can summarize the video, list key points, or find the timestamp where the presenter mentions a specific topic. Similarly, you can ask it to compare prices across different online stores when shopping on Amazon.
As long as you’re logged into a service, Comet Assistant can do pretty much everything you can do manually. It can create playlists of specific genres or artists, prepare meal plans for the next week and add necessary ingredients to your cart, help you prepare travel itineraries based on your budget and preferences, and integrate with work tools like Slack, Asana, WhatsApp, Dropbox, Notion, and GitHub to manage your daily workflow.
How I use it in my workflow
Custom shortcuts and automated tasks have become indispensable
After two months of daily use, Comet has changed how I use the web. And the most valuable feature has been custom shortcuts. Instead of typing the same instructions repeatedly, I’ve created shortcuts for my common tasks. When I type /update-sheet, Comet automatically updates my Google Sheet with completed tasks from Asana. It navigates between tabs, checks for duplicates, and adds new entries without my supervision.
I’ve also set up shortcuts for reviewing article previews before submission. Comet checks for grammatical issues, verifies links work, and compares my articles against style guides. It catches inconsistent capitalization in headings, forgotten image captions, and other elements that can often be overlooked after several hours of writing or rushing to meet a deadline.
Another essential feature in Comet is its voice mode. Press Alt + Shift + V to activate the voice mode assistant, and much like Gemini, you can have a conversation or ask it to perform a task. It’s handy for dictating URLs, search queries, or complex instructions without needing to touch the keyboard.
Comet also integrates Perplexity’s Tasks feature, which lets you schedule recurring actions based on time or conditions. I’ve set up several automated routines that run without my involvement.
For example, every morning, it shows me my Asana tasks and recent comments. Twice a week, it checks my Amazon Subscribe & Save items. Every evening at 7 PM, it scans tech websites for articles published in the last 24 hours and presents a summarized list.
These aren’t groundbreaking features individually, but having them integrated into my browser and running automatically makes them practical.
The not-so-good bits
Occasional crashes, high resource usage, and privacy concerns
Comet isn’t perfect. I’ve noticed that the browser becomes unresponsive and crashes when multiple YouTube videos are open, which happens more often than I’d like. The resource usage is noticeably higher than Edge or standard Chrome, especially when the AI assistant is actively working on tasks.
Privacy is my biggest concern. Since Comet uses Perplexity’s AI answer engine, the AI data retention option is enabled by default. Perplexity’s CEO has mentioned that the browser could use user data to show hyper-personalized ads. This is concerning when you’re giving it access to your email and work accounts for automation.
The Comet assistant moves slowly through tasks, but that’s not really the issue. I don’t mind the deliberate pace since it handles things in the background while I work on something else. However, what’s frustrating is when it can’t interact with certain website elements properly. For instance, it got stuck in endless loops trying to create a new project in Photopea. So, it has difficulty navigating websites that are custom-built and less established.
The voice recognition, too, fails occasionally and is not capable of carrying out complex tasks. Sometimes, it gets stuck in loops while trying to complete simple tasks. When it works, it saves minutes. When it doesn’t, you’ve wasted time watching it fail. Often, I have to resort to typing the prompt in the Assistant to get things done, which makes it harder to rely on voice mode all the time.
- OS
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Windows, macOS
- Developer
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Perplexity
Comet is the future of browsers, and Perplexity has the head start
While I don’t pretend Comet is picture-perfect in everything it does and still prefer Edge with its unique features and stability for other work, Perplexity has done the agentic browser trend right. It’s built on Chromium, syncs across devices with the Perplexity account, and is efficient as an AI assistant to help me with almost everything that I do on my browser.
That said, I’m selective about what I let it access. For sensitive financial transactions or confidential work documents, I stick to conventional browsers. The productivity gains are real, but they come from giving Comet access to your data. Make that trade-off consciously.
