Highlights from 2025: Google Workspace Update Recap

Gemini rolled into Workspace plans

The year started with the biggest change to the availability of Gemini: Google announced that ✨ Gemini ✨ features were being integrated into Google Workspace Business and Enterprise plans, eliminating the need for separate Gemini add-ons. This made a range of AI-powered features available across Workspace, including 📝 “Take notes for me” in Google Meet, ✍️ “Help me write” in Gmail and Docs and the 💬 Gemini side panel. The transition from separate add-ons to features being included in Workspace as standard was completed when Google opened up additional AI features for Google Meet and Google Chat as well as “Summarize this file” in Gmail.

Google Chat

In March, when 📂 sharing files within Chat conversations, Google added a new “Summarize this file” button that allowed you to prompt Gemini into giving you an 📝 overview of the file contents without needing to leave the conversation. It first supported Google Docs, Slides and Sheets files and later gained support for other file types in June. File summaries were initially only available on the 🌐 web but support was expanded to 📱 mobile devices in October.

In addition to confirming or releasing meeting rooms and desks, Comeen launched its 🤖 Workplace AI Agent for Google Chat in June. This AI-assisted integration lets you book spaces and ask office-related questions by ✍️ writing natural language prompts directly from your 💬 Chat conversations, helping to streamline booking processes. The integration helps anyone using Comeen as a room-booking or workplace management platform.

Two months later, Gemini-generated 📝 bulleted summary cards for unread Chat conversations were introduced to help you 🕐 save time when catching up on unread messages. The summaries appear either automatically or can be manually prompted with a button if there are fewer unread messages. Towards the end of the year, you could then preview the most recent unread message in a 💬 conversation or 🧵 thread by simply 🖱️ hovering over it in the left-hand menu, without having to ✅ mark the chat as read.

In September, you were able to start ✍️ refining your messages directly within 💬 Google Chat conversations using ✨ Gemini. The “Refine” button lets you ask Gemini to propose an alternate version of what you wrote that aims to improve clarity, spelling and more.

At the end of the year, Google began rolling out the ability to 🕒 schedule messages in Google Chat, allowing you to send them at a later and more convenient time. You can schedule any message that you would normally send, including ones that are 🗨️ quote-replies, in 🧵 threaded conversations and that contain media, such as attached 🖼️ images or 🔗 in-line links. A new Draft shortcut was also added to the left side panel to help you manage and ✏️ edit all of your scheduled messages from one place.

Further Google Chat updates

• The ability to 📌 pin Google Chat messages was introduced with the new Board tab, allowing you to keep relevant files, links and resources on a bulletin board. Access to 📍 Boards, along with 📁 Shared items, ✅ Tasks and 🧵 Threads, was later consolidated into an expandable side panel on the 🌐 web.
• You can ✍ rename any new or existing group messages in Google Chat for easier identification, instead of the default name being a list of participant names.
• 🎉 Emoji reactions to messages now trigger 🔔 push notifications, just like regular written replies.
• In addition to 😃 emoji and 🎬 GIFs, you can also send 🐼 stickers in conversations on the web as a way to 🥳 express emotion or 👀 add visual interest.
• 📝 Summaries in the Google Chat 🏡 home view gained support for an additional three languages in April then another four the month after. Meanwhile, Gemini in the side panel gained support for the same seven languages.

Gmail

In order to enhance security within Gmail, 🔐 data loss prevention (DLP) rules were introduced into Gmail to protect sensitive information from accidentally leaving the organisation. Data classification 🏷 labels are applied instantaneously when ✍️ composing emails, providing immediate feedback about potential policy violations before you hit send. These features were first launched into beta in March and became generally available in April, along with several other feature enhancements. 🧑‍💻 As of March, admins can view “Sensitive content snippets” for Gmail DLP triggers in the security investigation tool to help them 🕵️ identify any security risks. In December, you were able to create a DLP rule that added a header or footer message to the email, helping ensure people were aware of the sensitivity of an email’s contents; header and footer messages will even be shown to external recipients so that they can take any necessary precautions.

In July, to help make 🗓️ scheduling meetings via email easier, Google added the ability to insert your appointment schedule directly from 📅 Google Calendar into your emails. Later in the year, the ✨ Gemini-powered “Help me schedule” became available. This automatically detects meeting requests and suggests available 🕜 times based on your calendar which you can then insert into your reply as interactive 🔗 links for the recipient to select.

Further Gmail updates

• When asking Gemini questions about your inbox using the Gmail ❓ Q&A feature on 📱 mobile, you can now insert Gemini’s Q&A responses directly into your email draft to help save time.
• Gmail now provides automatic ✨📝 Gemini summary cards for email threads with multiple replies. Summary cards are visible at the top of the email and were made available across 📱 Android, iOS and, later, the 🌐 web.
• Gemini automatically detects calendar-related content in your emails, enabling you to quickly ➕ create a 📅 calendar event based on the email using a button. This feature rolled out first on the 🌐 web in March and to 📱 Android and iOS in August.
• You can now reply to emails in ✉️ Gmail with 😃 emoji reactions, similar to 💬 Google Chat and 📄 Google Docs. This will be enabled by default in 2026 unless deactivated by admins.
• On both iOS and Android, you can use Gemini to generate 🖼️ custom images using 💬 text prompts and insert them into an email draft.
• Since April, Gmail on Android defaults to using your 🌐✍️ web signature, complete with images, links and text formatting, unless set otherwise.
• In addition to sorting your ✉️🔍 email search results by most recent, you can also sort it by most relevant. This considers factors such as ⏳ recency of emails, 🖱️ most-clicked emails and 👥 frequent contacts.
• To help manage your inbox, all of your subscriptions are now conveniently 📋 listed in one place.
• Gmail 📱🔔 mobile notifications were updated in September: you can now ✅ mark emails as read directly from notifications on Android and see the 🙍 sender’s avatar in notifications on iOS.
• In December, the ability to quickly 📨 forward an email from Gmail directly to Google Chat started rolling out. It creates a space to discuss the email whilst making sure everyone has access.
• “Help me write” in Gmail became available in 🇯🇵 Japanese and 🇰🇷 Korean in April.

Google Drive

In March, two new prompts were added to Gemini in the side panel of Google Drive that enable you create new 📄 files and 📂 folders: “Create a new folder” and “Create a new Google Doc, Sheet or Slide”. Gemini then gained further file support in May, allowing you to 📑 reference specific files when prompting Gemini to ensure that it used only the files you wanted.

Throughout the year, Gemini's assistance with 📄 PDF files in Drive became easier to access beginning in January: the Gemini side panel now appears within the PDF preview window, eliminating the need to open a separate tab to interact with Gemini regarding the PDF. Upon opening the file, 📝 Gemini-generated summary cards of the file began appearing within the side panel in June. Then, in November, the ability to generate 🎧 PDF audio overviews was added. Audio overviews are AI-hosted, podcast-like discussions based on your uploaded content, first introduced in NotebookLM.

Features were also added to make it easier to work with videos in Drive. First, Gemini gained support for video files; this allowed you to ask Gemini to 📝 summarise or 🔎 find key details in your 📹 video files without the need to watch every second. 🖼️ Thumbnail previews (July) and video 📜 transcripts (February) were added to make 📽 video content easier to search and navigate. Additionally, automatically generated 💬 captions for uploaded videos gained support for an additional 27 languages in November and a new 📊 Analytics section (May) in the video’s “Details” panel helps you to understand whether people are engaging with the content.

Further Google Drive updates

• Gemini’s “Catch Me Up” in Drive provides an overview of the changes made to 📂 files since you last opened them, including 💬 comments on 📄 Docs, Sheets and Slides files or ✏️ edits in Docs files.
• A new 🖱️ button in Google Drive lets you jump straight into 📹 Google Vids, enabling you to get started ✏️ editing videos even quicker.
• Image support was added to the Gemini side panel in August, enabling Gemini to provide 📝 summaries, 💬 text extracts and more for 🖼️ image files located in Drive.
• Interacting with Gemini in the PDF viewer and about folders in the side panel both gained support for more than 20 additional languages.

Google Docs

In March, to make it easier to consume longer documents, a new 🧩 building block was introduced to 📝 Google Docs that summarises content using Gemini. The AI summary block can be quickly inserted into a file as a new section alongside other content and all collaborators can see and edit the summary once it has been generated.

In April, for extra security, and as a visual warning, Google brought a new 🏷️ “External” badge that appeared by default in 📄 Google Docs, Sheets and Slides when collaborating with anyone external to your organisation. The badge provides a clear signal that there might be a need to treat the file with caution.

The ability to 🎧 listen to your 📄 documents was added in August, meaning that you can use Gemini to create an audio version of your content which will then be read aloud with your choice of 🗣️ voice and ⏩ playback speed. This can be useful for proofreading, accessibility or other times where hearing the words spoken can be helpful. A smart chip can also be added to the document to make it easier to play back the audio or to indicate to collaborators that you intend for them to do so.

A couple of months later, ✨ Gemini in the side panel of 📄 Google Docs was able to 🕵️ identify all of the 🔗 linked sources in a document, allowing you to instruct Gemini to use only the context from those 📑 sources when generating its output. This ensures Gemini's response is grounded in the sources you trust. You can still choose to reference additional documents that aren’t explicitly linked in the document.

Further Google Docs updates

• In March, you were able to start exporting client-side encrypted 📄 Google Docs files as Microsoft Word files in open beta. This made it easier to move files across platforms whilst ensuring you retain control of the 🔑 encryption keys.
• By the end of August, 📱 Android users could leverage ✨ Gemini to generate 🖼️ custom images, inserting a bespoke image into your document while you’re on the go.
• “Help me create” gained support for an additional seven languages in March and "Help me write" gained support for four in April.
• Gemini in Docs became available on 📱 Android and iOS in more than 20 additional languages.

Google Sheets

Gemini’s capabilities within Google Sheets were greatly enhanced during 2025. By the end of May, you were able to leverage Gemini to make changes to your spreadsheet using natural language prompts, allowing you to ✍️ describe your desired outcome without needing to know the feature’s name. In June, you could gain data insights and create fully ✏️ editable charts in many more languages. To expand upon this, in October you could have Gemini perform multiple actions or apply changes to several tables at once using a single prompt, requesting actions such as 👷 bulk structural edits or 📊 cross-table data analysis.

In September, “Convert to table” would automatically name newly-formatted tables, allowing for formula creation using the table name instead of cell references. At the end of the same month, the Gemini side panel's formula generation was enhanced to provide detailed, 👣 step-by-step explanations, 🔢 multiple formula options and error correction assistance.

The AI function in Sheets was introduced mid-year, allowing you to invoke Gemini to generate 💬 text and to 📝 summarise or 📑 categorise cell data directly within a cell. It’s available in English and an additional seven languages and can also provide up-to-date 🌐 web information within in-cell prompts thanks to its Google Search integration that was added in October.

Further Google Sheets Updates

• In April, an update to 🔎 Tables in Sheets allowed for 📊 column-level aggregation of data when using the group-by view, making it faster to gain insights from your tabulated data.
• Several speed improvements for actions in Sheets were made in February, including pasting data between spreadsheets and setting up filters.

Google Slides

👷 Building blocks were brought to Google Slides in April. Located in the sidebar, the building blocks provide access to a library of pre-formatted content, such as 🗓️ agendas, 🗣️ quotes, 📈 key statistics and 🖼️ stock images to help you get started faster.

The ability to remove 🖼️ image backgrounds in Google Slides, Drawings and Vids became available to users of more than 20 additional languages after only being available in English. A couple of months later, Google built upon the feature, enabling you to ↔️ expand images and modify 🖼️ image backgrounds using Gemini within Slides and Vids.

Further Google Slides Updates

• A variety of new templates were rolled out in April to help elevate your presentations and save you time; templates included 💼 business proposals, 📑 marketing plans, 🔎 quarterly reviews and more, though are only available if your language is set to 🇺🇸 U.S. English.
• For more control and precision, and to perfectly align every element on the page, you can use the ➡️ arrow keys to move ⏹️ objects and 🖼️ images by one pixel at a time.
• When using 💬 text boxes in Slides, you now have the option to leverage ✨ Gemini to help ✏️ refine and edit text without having to leave the app.
• Gemini in the side panel of Slides gained support for seven new languages at the start of March and then another 21 a couple weeks later. By the end of June, you could utilise multilingual prompts in any of the 20+ languages when generating images with Imagen 4.

Google Calendar

From August, everyone who didn’t already have an appointment schedule in Google Calendar got a pre-configured 🗓️ booking page generated for them in order to help make it easier for people to schedule meetings with them. This shareable page will update your availability dynamically to avoid double bookings. Additionally, as part of the same update, you're able to access all of your booking pages directly from the 📅 Google Calendar side panel.

In November, in order to prevent the accidental re-use of meeting codes when there are significant changes to the nature of the event, ✏️ editing the 🕑 start time or recurrence of a Google Meet event will now generate a new and unique 🔗 Google Meet link for all future events in the new series.

Further Google Calendar updates

• In July, Android device users gained support for 👥 sharing calendars with others directly from the Calendar app. This includes both your own calendars and any you have permission to share.
• The ability to schedule dedicated 🕑 time in Calendar for specific ✅ Google Tasks was introduced in November, enabling you to utilise Calendar features, like “Do not disturb”, to enhance productivity and get 🔔 reminders until the task is complete.

Google Forms

To help save time in Google Forms when 📑 reviewing a form, you could prompt Gemini to generate summaries that highlight the core themes and findings of all of the form’s responses from June. Then, in September, Gemini would begin to automatically and proactively provide summaries for every 📝 short-answer and paragraph question. These summaries, whether manually generated or proactively provided, give you a quick overview of the sentiment and feedback of form responses before digging into individual submissions.

Then, to help you get started creating forms quicker, another Gemini feature was also added in June: Gemini’s “Help me create”, which later gained support for seven additional languages. The feature allows you to leverage Gemini to help you 🎨 create bespoke forms from a ✍️ text prompt and referenced 📂 files. By August, you could use Gemini to generate relevant questions based on your form's existing content.

Further Google Forms Updates

• There’s now an option for respondents to 💬 contact the form’s owner, providing a way to clarify a question or alert the creator to a mistake.
• New granular 🧑‍💻 admin controls for form responses were added at the start of June, enabling admins to ⚙️ control whether users within their domain can respond to forms created externally or whether they can share forms with external recipients. By the end of the month, these controls were expanded to support existing forms.

Google Vids

Throughout the year, Google has been building upon AI voiceovers within 📹 Google Vids. In February, the choice of 🗣️ AI voiceovers was expanded significantly with the addition of options such as an educator, explainer, coach and more. By the end of March, you could simultaneously generate AI voiceovers and scripts for 🎬 scenes using “Help me create”. In April, you could see previews for each scene’s script at once and, to make it easier to ✏️ edit voiceovers when the script has changed, Google added a 🖱️“Generate all voiceovers”” button that would even extend the scene if the newly-revised script was longer. There is also now the option to use 🤖 AI avatars, introduced in August, to deliver your scripted content, providing not only a voiceover but an AI presenter for your videos.

In late April, you were able to control and expand the timeline height for easier previewing and editing of more objects and audio tracks per scene. 🔊 Automatic volume levelling to balance audio was introduced in July along with 🗣️ audio ducking to lower background music during primary or spoken audio. Google then added ✂️ transcript-based trimming, allowing you to quickly ❌ remove filler words, pauses and other unwanted sections from video clips using Gemini.

In June, a new “Import Slides” option allowed you to convert 🖼️ Google Slides presentations into 📹 videos. Building upon this, in September ✨ “Help me create” was updated so that you could create videos by directly referencing Google Slides presentations in your ✍️ prompts. Then, later that same month, Google expanded this functionality further by adding the ability for the generated videos to also include 📜 Gemini-generated scripts, 🗣️ AI voiceovers and 🎵 background music.

Further Google Vids Updates

• In March you could start ✏️ customising the default 🎨 colours and fonts for new scenes and objects.
• At the end of April, Google Vids began rolling out to Google Workspace Business Starter, Enterprise Starter and Nonprofit tiers, which includes ⌛ time-limited access to all AI-enabled features.
• A “Getting started” page was added in May, providing direct shortcuts to key features like ✨ “Help me create”, 🎬 video clip generation, 🖼️ templates and getting started with a blank video.
• With Veo 3, you can now use AI to generate videos with 🔊 sound, 🔄 convert a 🖼️ static image into a dynamic, eight-second 📹 video with sound and, with the latest Veo 3.1, you’re able to reference up to three images simultaneously when generating video clips.

Gemini

✍ Canvas was introduced to the Gemini app in March. It’s a dedicated workspace for creating, formatting and refining your 📄 documents or 🧑‍💻 code whilst getting real-time feedback on building prototypes for apps, scripts and more. In May, Google expanded Canvas’s capabilities by offering a wider range of ways to create content with Gemini, including 🌐 generating webpages, 🧠 creating interactive quizzes and more.

Also in May, Google Workspace apps for Gemini (formerly 🧩 “extensions”), moved out of beta and became generally available, allowing you to seamlessly and automatically integrate content from apps like ✉️ Gmail, 📅 Calendar, 🗃️ Drive, 📄 Docs, 📝 Keep and 📋 Tasks directly into the Gemini app. Later in the year, ✨📚 Gemini's Deep Research capability became able to draw context from 🗃️ Google Drive, ✉️ Gmail, and 💬 Google Chat, resulting in more comprehensive responses and eliminating the need to constantly switch between tabs.

🎤 Gemini Live was added to the mobile app in May, enabling you to have two-way 🗣️ voice conversations with Gemini directly from your 🤳 phone about various topics. By the end of August, you were able to reference your 📅 Google Calendar, 📋 Tasks and 🏰 Keep data whilst conversing to provide more context and improve upon Gemini's personalised responses.

November brought two new AI models to Gemini: ✨ Gemini 3 Pro and 🍌 Nano Banana Pro. Gemini 3 Pro features a 🧠 Deep Think mode, enhanced multimodal understanding and improved reasoning across ✍️ text, 🖼️ images, 🔊 audio, 📹 video and more. Nano Banana Pro is Gemini’s latest image generation model that lets you create even more visuals in Google Slides, Google Vids and NotebookLM, in addition to the Gemini app.

Further Gemini updates

• In February, a new dropdown menu began rolling out in the Gemini app, letting users with Gemini Advanced select different AI models, including 🔬 experimental models and 📚 Deep Research, to tailor their experience for specific tasks. Deep Research was later made available on the 📱 mobile app in May.
• 🗣️ Audio overviews came to the Gemini app in March and gained support for an additional 45 languages in May.
• The ability to upload 📂 files from your 📱 mobile device directly to the Gemini mobile app was added at the end of March.
• To help you gain a deeper understanding of new topics, Google introduced new learning tools to Gemini in August. It included 📓 Guided Learning, 🧠 customisable quizzes, 🎬 automatic integration of visuals in its responses and more.
• In July, 💎 Gems (custom AI assistants), previously found only in the Gemini app, began being integrated into the side panel of everyday Workspace apps. This meant that you could use your 🖌️ custom, specialised AI assistants instantly whilst you're working on a 📄 document, ✉️ email or 📈 spreadsheet without having to 🔁 switch tabs or apps.
• 💎 Gems can be shared with others in Google Workspace as of September; in May, you could add 📂 files to your Gem instructions in more than 40 languages.
• ✨ Gemini in the side panel of Docs, Sheets, Drive and Gmail was expanded to support an additional 17 languages in February and an additional four in March. Meanwhile, the ability to generate 🖼️ images in the Gemini side panel of Gmail, Docs and Drive rolled out to an additional seven.

NotebookLM

NotebookLM is Google’s AI-powered research assistant and, at the end of April, its 🔊 Audio Overview gained support for over 50 additional languages in beta. You could also upload your 🔬 research, 📝 notes and 📄 documents in any of the supported languages and generate the Audio Overview in a different one.

A couple of months later, Google introduced 📹 Video Overviews, which build upon 🎙️ Audio Overviews, allowing you to turn your 📑 research into AI-generated, narrated videos. They provide dynamic 👁‍🗨 visual summaries that include 🖼️ images, 📊 diagrams, 💬 quotes and 🔑 key points from your uploaded sources.

Further NotebookLM updates

• May saw Google launch the NotebookLM mobile app on both 📱 Android and iOS, enabling you to 🎧 listen to audio overviews offline, 📲 import content on the go and more.
• 📚 Learning Guide offers a way for you to learn interactively with the AI assistant in NotebookLM. It uses open-ended questions to guide you 👣 step-by-step to the answer, helping you to gain a deeper understanding of topics.

Workspace Studio

In December, Google began rolling out Google Workspace Studio, a new platform to create, manage and share 🤖 AI agents that can automate your work across the Workspace ecosystem. It had been called Workspace Flows during the beta phase.

Google Vault

In March, a new beta made it possible to convert 🔒 client-side encrypted documents after a Vault or Takeout export, meaning that you can convert them to Microsoft Word files even after exporting them from Workspace.

Chrome

At the start of October, Gemini in Chrome became generally available to Google Workspace users in the 🇺🇸 United States across Mac, Windows and iOS. Once activated, you can use the ✨ AI browsing assistant to 🕵️ ask page-related questions, 🔑 extract key insights, 🗣️ engage in two-way conversations with Gemini Live and more.

Google Workspace Add-ons and Tiers

In April, a new Google Workspace tier was introduced called 💼 Frontline Plus, Google’s most comprehensive Frontline plan. Then, a month later, the new Google AI Ultra for Business Workspace add-on was launched and made available to 75+ additional countries in July, providing access to higher usage limits and new 🧰 tools such as Flow, Whisk and Project Mariner.

2026 & what's next

Google Workspace saw a wide range of updates in 2025 and we look forward to seeing what 2026 will bring. If you’d like to learn more about any of the updates, drop us a line at info@GeckoTech.cloud.

We’ve also rounded up all of the biggest Google Meet updates from 2025 separately; explore all of the highlights here.