Google Interview Warmup is widely reported to have been retired during 2026, its grow.google address said to redirect to general interview advice instead of the tool. That is a reported change rather than a date to state as fact, so check the address yourself. The loop it ran was small and copyable, though: a question arrives, you answer out loud, you see your own words back. You can rebuild that on a Windows PC in about ten minutes with a generated question bank, Windows voice typing, and five free minutes a day of copilot listening time. Three parts of Warmup do not come back with it, listed below.
The loop, broken into its four moving parts
Copying something starts with knowing what it did. Warmup ran four steps in a fixed order, described here as it behaved while live, so treat each specific as reported rather than checkable today.
- A question arrived as text. One at a time, five to a set, from a field you picked at the start. The general set covered ordinary behavioural ground; the others followed Google's certificate tracks, so a data analytics set asked data analytics things.
- You answered by speaking. Speech recognition ran in the browser while you talked, and you could type instead if you were somewhere you could not speak.
- Your transcript came back word for word. False starts included, and the sentence you abandoned halfway. Reading it is uncomfortable, which is the point.
- Three patterns were marked on it. Job-related terms you had used, your most-used words, and talking points the question was expected to touch.
What it never did was grade you. No score, no percentage, no model answer to fall short of. That refusal was a design decision, and it is the part most replacements quietly drop.
Rebuilding it on Windows in about ten minutes
The rebuild splits the loop across three free things: a generator for the question, a copilot's free tier for the model answer, and Windows' own dictation for your transcript.
Build a question bank first
Warmup's sets were curated by field. A generator goes narrower: the company Q&A generator builds a bank for a named company and role, so instead of a generic "tell me about a time you handled conflict" you get the version shaped by the job you applied for. Aim for twenty questions, four Warmup-sized sets.
Make the question arrive as sound
This is the step people skip, and the one that turns reading into rehearsal. Paste the bank into Edge and use Read Aloud, or use Narrator, so the question comes out of your speakers. The copilot listens to system playback rather than a microphone, so a question spoken by your own PC reaches it the way an interviewer's voice would over a call. Headphones are fine.
Hide the draft before you open your mouth
Ctrl+Alt+H hides the overlay the moment the question finishes. If an answer is on screen while you speak you are reading, not practising, and Warmup showed you nothing until you were done for that exact reason. Answer to an empty room, at full length, without stopping to correct yourself.
Capture your own words with voice typing
Press Win and H, put the cursor in Notepad, and dictate as you speak. No live copilot supplies this, because a live copilot is pointed at the other person. Windows voice typing is built into Windows 10 and 11, costs nothing, and gives you the verbatim transcript that made Warmup useful.
Reveal, then compare
Ctrl+Alt+H again brings back an answer drafted from your resume. Read your dictated transcript beside it. Grok, DeepSeek and Gemini all answer every question in parallel, so cycling the answer mode with Ctrl+Alt+Q is a display toggle that re-asks nothing and costs no extra time.
Why five free minutes covers more reps than it sounds
The free tier is 5 minutes a day, no card required, which reads like nothing until you look at what is counted. Metering is listening time only: the clock advances while the copilot is receiving audio, not for the whole wall-clock session. Here the only audio it receives is the question being read aloud, so your ninety-second answer happens in silence as far as the meter is concerned.
The arithmetic is question length, not session length. A behavioural question read aloud runs roughly ten to twenty seconds. At fifteen seconds each, five minutes covers about twenty questions, four Warmup sets a day, every day, for nothing. That ratio collapses in a real call where the interviewer talks for minutes at a stretch, which is why the free tier is generous for practice and thin for live use. The plans page covers the paid tiers.
| Interview Warmup, as it ran | The Windows rebuild | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it ran | Any browser, any device, including Mac, Chromebook and phone | Windows 10 and 11 only. No macOS, no Linux, no mobile, no browser extension. |
| How the question reaches you | Text on screen, from curated sets tied to certificate fields | Read aloud by your own PC, generated for the company and role |
| Who transcribes your answer | The tool itself, automatically | Nothing does. Windows voice typing, started by you, in a separate window. |
| What you see afterwards | Job-related terms, most-used words, talking points | A model answer to compare against, in three model framings |
| Delivery analysis | Most-used words counted for you | None. No filler count, no pace, no scoring of any kind. |
| Cost and cap | Free, with no daily allowance to run out of | Free tier is 5 minutes of listening time per day |
Three things Warmup did that this setup does not
One, it handed you your own words back automatically. No live copilot does that, because a live copilot is listening to the interviewer. The Win and H workaround gets you a transcript, but it is a second window, a second thing to remember to start, and nothing counts your most-used words at the end. You read it and notice, or you do not.
Two, it ran anywhere, on anything, uncapped. No install, no operating system requirement, no daily allowance, nothing to pay later. Anyone with a browser and a quiet room could use it, which mattered most for the people it was aimed at. A Windows-only desktop app is a real step down in reach.
Three, it refused to grade you, on purpose. Warmup showed patterns and stayed silent about quality. A copilot answers properly, and reading a fluent draft straight after your own halting attempt is discouraging for some people and, worse, anchoring: you reach for the model's phrasing instead of your own story. Use the draft to check what you missed, never for wording.
When to skip the rebuild entirely
If your problem is delivery rather than content, this is the wrong tool and no amount of setup fixes it. Filler words, speeding up when nervous, trailing off at the end, none of it is measured. There is no analysis of your own speech anywhere in OfferPilot AI, so for a delivery problem the honest recommendation is a practice tool that records you and scores the recording. And if you want the loop on a Mac, a Chromebook or a phone, stop at the platform row: that is a hard limit, not a preference.
There is also a shape mismatch. A live copilot is built for real calls, and using it as a practice metronome is off-label. Those 5 free minutes are a trial allowance, not a study plan, and forty reps a day will hit the cap and leave you paying for a live product to do a rehearsal job. Take the free tier for practice, or buy it for the live half, but not for practice volume.
One thing here is irrelevant, and worth saying so. The overlay's exclusion from screen capture matters in a shared call, not at your own desk alone: it keeps the overlay out of screen sharing and recording, and nothing more. It does not affect a webcam, a lockdown browser, eye tracking, a second-device camera or a person in the room.
Start with the question bank
Order matters more than tools. Twenty specific questions beat five generic ones, and the loop only works if you answer before you read anything. Build the bank with the Q&A generator, work through a set with Notepad open and the overlay hidden, then see whether your own transcript embarrasses you. If it does, the loop is working. The interview questions library is a fallback if you want prompts without generating a bank, and the Windows download covers the copilot half on the free tier. Questions go to support@offerpilotai.ink.
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