August 2025 saw several new features added across Google Meet and Google Workspace. Amongst the key updates are a new audio feature in Google Docs that lets you listen to your documents, a brand new user interface for Google Meet Hardware touch controllers and an addition to Google Calendar that now automatically creates a pre-configured booking page for you to make it easier to schedule meetings.
Continue reading to uncover what’s new; or, jump directly to the application that interests you most.
Google Meet
At the start of the month, proximity detection was introduced to Google Meet. It enables automatic check-in to a meeting room using ultrasound. When you join a call in the Chrome browser, your 💻🎤 laptop microphone will listen for an 🔊 ultrasound signal from your Google Meet Hardware; if one is detected, the option to join in Companion Mode will be highlighted, simplifying the check-in process by removing the 👣 step of manually identifying the room from which you are joining. This reduces the chance of anyone in the room causing an echo on the call by joining from a laptop without using Companion Mode.
Google also announced an upcoming refresh of the user interface for Google Meet Hardware touch controllers, which is coming first to meeting room kits featuring a Compute System. This update will align the design of the interface more closely with the Google Meet 🌐 web and 📱 mobile interfaces. The new design will include a 🌒 dark mode, enhanced 👀 button visibility and a 🎨 redesigned pre-call meeting screen. The rollout is scheduled to start 4–6 weeks after the announcement, during which time there is an extended preview window. 🧑💻 Admins can enrol selected devices in the preview to have the opportunity to test it, get users familiar with the new look and to update any internal user guides before the broader rollout begins.
💡 Instructions on enrolling devices in the preview window can be found here.
Additionally, changes to Google Admin panel settings will streamline management of Google Meet Hardware. These changes include the ability to customise which 🚨 alerts are sent as ✉️ emails versus which are sent as 📳 text messages and a more predictable way to schedule regular device 🔄 reboots. The list of choices for configuring your device’s 🌎 time zone has also been simplified and the 📑 diagnostics, logs and error reports have been consolidated into a single location.
Google Meet log events now include a field that indicates whether a 📞 call endpoint used standard ☁️🔐 cloud encryption or 👥🔐 client-side encryption. You can find this data within the Google Admin Panel or by using the Admin Reports SDK APIn.
✍️ “Take notes for me” in Google Meet, which uses ✨ Gemini ✨ to automatically identify and capture 👣 next steps discussed during meetings, has expanded its support to an additional seven languages: 🇫🇷 French, 🇩🇪 German, 🇮🇹 Italian, 🇯🇵 Japanese, 🇰🇷 Korean, 🇵🇹 Portuguese and 🇪🇸 Spanish.
Lastly, you’ll now be able to enter fullscreen mode with a single button to ↔️ expand the view of a 🖥️ shared screen or presentation when using Google Meet in a 🌐 web browser, allowing you to more easily 👀 see the presented content in greater detail.
Google Workspace
Google Docs
Last month also brought the ability to leverage ✨ Gemini to generate and insert 🖼️ unique images directly within Google Docs on 📱 Android, which can be useful when you’re 🏃 on the go. Similar to the 🌐 web experience, you can now use a ✍️ text prompt to describe the image you want and Gemini will create a bespoke image for you.
You can now also 🎧 listen to your 📄 documents. You can use Gemini to create an audio version of your content which can then be read aloud with your choice of 🗣️ voice and ⏩ playback speed. For easy access, authors can embed an ▶️ audio button directly into the document or you can use the “Listen to this tab” option in the tools menu.
Google Sheets
The =ISURL() and =ISEMAIL() functions in Google Sheets will now recognise a wider range of 🌐 URLs and ✉️ email addresses. This means that more correctly formatted entries will now more accurately return a TRUE result. This update will affect both new and existing uses of these functions.
When you use the “Convert to table” function, ✨ Gemini will now automatically give names to the newly-formatted tables. Adding a table name allows for named references, meaning you can use the names of the table and its columns instead of cell references in your formulae. This simplifies formula creation and ensures formula ranges automatically update as the table changes, eliminating the need to manually adjust cell ranges over time.
Google Slides
In Google Slides and Google Vids, two ✨ Gemini-powered image ✏️ editing features became available. They include the ability to modify an 🖼️ image's background – replacing it with something new instead of just removing it – and also the ability to ↔️ expand images, having Gemini automatically fill in the extra space to enlarge and reframe pictures without losing quality.
In addition to the Gemini features, Google also introduced the ability to use your ➡️ keyboard arrow keys to move ⏹️ objects and 🖼️ images by one pixel at a time, providing more control and precision in Google Slides. This is useful when you want to perfectly align every element on the page. If you still want to take bigger steps, you can: hold shift when pressing the arrow keys.
Google Drive
The overlay file previewer in Google Drive was upgraded to use a 1 million token context window. This means that, when prompting ✨ Gemini about contents in large 📄 PDFs, you’ll now be able to get more 📝 in-depth responses.
In addition, a new shortcut was introduced to Google Drive which allows you to open the video directly in Google Vids. When you preview a 📹 video file in Drive, there will now be an “Open with Vids” button. This lets you started ✏️ editing videos quicker and allows you to leverage Vids features like ✨ AI-assisted editing and voiceovers, 🔊 sound balancing, 🎧 background music and more, all without the need to download the video first.
In the Google Drive side panel, you’ll soon be able to interact with Gemini about 🖼️ images stored in Drive. This means that, in addition to ✍️ text-based files, you‘ll be able to ask Gemini for a 📝 quick overview of what an image contains, 💬 extract text and key information from the image and more. It can be particularly useful for text-heavy images and scanned documents such as receipts or contracts.
Gmail
The single update to Gmail last month saw Gemini's ability to automatically detect calendar-related content roll out to 📱 Android and iOS. This means that if you receive an ✉️ email containing event-related information – such as dates, times and locations – Gemini will prompt you to ➕ add them as 📅 calendar events using a button on your phone. Clicking this button automatically populates Google Calendar with event details extracted from the email, saving you the time and effort of manual entry.
Google Chat
In Google Chat, when a 💬 direct message, group conversation or space has many unread messages, Gemini will now automatically present you with a 📝 bulleted summary of the discussion. For shorter unread conversations, you can also manually prompt Gemini for a summary by using a button. The summaries aim to save you 🕑 time and help you quickly get a sense of the conversation and its outcomes before choosing to 📖 read every individual message.
Google Calendar
Appointment schedules in Google Calendar make it easy for people – especially people external to your organisation – to book meetings with you by offering up times that you are free and letting them choose an available slot. Going forwards, everyone who doesn’t already have one will now get a pre-configured 🗓️ booking page, removing some friction in getting started. This shareable page will update your availability dynamically to avoid double bookings. Additionally, you’ll also be able to access all of your booking pages directly from the Google Calendar side panel, making it easier to manage your appointment schedules.
💡 For much more detail about appointment schedules, take a look at our complete guide. Find out how to customise your schedule to your liking by adjusting the booking window, putting a daily cap on bookings, altering availability (e.g. by blocking appointments on your days off) and how to add co-hosts to meetings.
Google Forms
The ability to leverage ✨ Gemini within Google Forms to generate questions began rolling out last month. The suggested questions are based on your existing 📋 form's content and include the question text, type and answer options. Once generated by Gemini, you can insert them into your form with a single 🖱️ click. This can help save you 🕒 time and provide relevant suggestions when you’re stuck.
NotebookLM
NotebookLM received two updates during August. Firstly, 📹 Video Overviews, which create a visual summary of your sources and research, gained support for an additional 80 languages. Secondly, 🎙️ Audio Overviews, the ✨ AI-hosted, podcast-style discussions of your 📄 documents and 📝 notes, will now be more detailed and nuanced in all supported languages, matching the length and quality of the output generated when using it in English.
Gemini
New tools were introduced last month to help deepen your understanding and learn new topics within the Gemini app. They include Guided Learning, a feature that breaks subject matter down into smaller, interactive steps; 🧠 customisable quizzes from which you can create 💡 flash cards and 🗒️ study guides; and automatic integration of 📹 YouTube videos, 📊 diagrams and 🖼️ images in Gemini outputs to help make the learning experience more engaging.
Additionally in the Gemini app, creating your own unique, illustrated 📖✨ storybooks with 🗣️ audio narration is now possible. To get started, you can write a ✍️ text prompt describing the story you’d like or alternatively you can use the new 📚💎 Storybook Gem. You’re also able to add 🖼️ images and other 📂 files to the prompt for additional context. Gemini will output a 10-page storybook based on your prompt and files.
Towards the end of the month, it became possible for Gemini Live to reference 📅 Google Calendar, 📋 Tasks and 🏰 Keep data during your conversations. This gives you the ability to provide more context and receive more personalised responses. For instance, through your conversations you can now ask what meetings you have scheduled, find out what tasks are overdue and edit or create a new note in Keep.
Google also announced an update to ✨ Gemini’s image editing model which aims to maintain more consistency of people or character likenesses between prompts, especially in multi-step prompts and when blending multiple photos or styles.
Google Vids
During the final week of August, Google brought three ✨ Gemini-powered features to Google Vids. Firstly, Gemini will now be able to identify filler words and awkward pauses using the video’s 📜 transcript. From there you’ll be able to quickly cut out the unwanted parts from the transcript and the video will be edited to match – without needing to re-record the whole video.
💡 Note: transcript-based trimming is available in English only.
Secondly, you'll soon be able to create scripted videos with 🤖 AI avatars. By providing your script and selecting from a library of avatars and voices, you can have an AI presenter deliver your content. This provides a faster, more efficient way to produce videos, without the need for a camera or a live presenter.
The third and final update enables you to use a ✍️ text prompt to transform a 🖼️ static image into a dynamic, eight-second video complete with 🔊 sound.
💡 Note: image-to-video generation is currently unavailable in the EEA, Switzerland and UK.
Google Keep
The Google Keep app for 📱 Android now allows you to sort your 📝 notes by 🗓️ "date created" and "date modified” in either ⬆️ ascending or ⬇️ descending order. This helps you to more easily organise your notes and quickly find what you're seeking.
Google Admin Panel
A new tool was introduced allowing admins to deploy context-aware access (CAA) policies that warn users – instead of blocking them – before they access certain Google Workspace apps if their device doesn't meet the set 🔐 security requirements. Whilst users can still access the app by acknowledging the risk, the warning message acts as a reminder of best practices and what actions they’d need to take to avoid being 🖐️ blocked. Admins can use this feature on both new and existing CAA policies and can see when warnings have been sent and viewed by users.
Google Workspace Add-on
Lastly, Google began rolling out access to Whisk in an additional 77 countries for those with the ✨ Google AI Ultra for Business add-on. People with this add-on will also have their 🪙 credit limit for Whisk and Flow doubled from 12,500 to 25,000 per month, so you can enjoy creating even more content.
Catch up on July’s updates
Do you want to see what happened in July? You can catch up on all of the updates across Google Meet and Google Workspace from the month in our July 2025 recap.
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