May 2026: Google Meet and Google Workspace Update Recap

Google Meet Hardware

Not only did May 2026 see the introduction of four new devices to the Google Meet Hardware portfolio, they are the first devices of their kind in the portfolio. The devices from Logitech and Neat are the first all-in-one appliance mode devices certified for Google Meet Hardware and span room sizes from huddle or phone booth spaces to large meeting rooms. The new devices are:

• 🔵 Logitech Rally Board 65
• 🟣 Neat Board 32
• 🟣 Neat Board 50
• 🟣 Neat Board Pro

Logitech’s and Neat’s all-in-one devices open up new possibilities within your meeting rooms and open spaces, offering solutions that are easy to deploy with minimal installation required. Each solution supports a variety of mounts, stands and carts so that they can be deployed in a range of spaces across the office.

Similar to Chrome-based all-in-one devices that came before them, all four of the appliance mode devices also support three ⬜ whiteboarding applications natively: FigJam, Lucidspark and Miro. You can install any of these applications to the Logitech Rally Board 65 and Neat Boards to have instant visual collaboration both within and outside of calls; leverage the whiteboards for in-person 🧠 brainstorming sessions or share the 🖼️ content into a call to include remote and at-home participants.

Google Meet

At the start of the month, a new setting in 📹 Google Meet enabled 🧑‍💻 admins to configure whether or not ✅ explicit consent will be required from meeting participants before any 🔴 recording, 📜 transcription or ✍️ notes can be captured. Rather than just receiving a 🔔 small notification that one or more of these features are on during a call, which may also be communicated verbally by meeting hosts, this change ensures that participants have explicitly permitted the meeting to be recorded, transcribed or automatically summarised with Gemini, helping your organisation to meet 🔐 legal or privacy requirements. Admins can further choose what happens if participants decline giving their consent: either the non-consenting party must leave the meeting or the hosts must stop the recording, transcription or note-taking.

Google then began rolling out an update that will automatically redirect guests to watch the 📺 livestream when a large adaptive meeting hosted on 📹 Google Meet reaches its full capacity. This means that, even when a meeting is full, additional attendees can still join instantly without the need for hosts to manage a separate 🔗 link and invitation process for the livestream, making it easier and quicker for everyone to be in the right place at the right time. Livestream participants will still be able to engage with the meeting through 💬 chat, 📊 polls and ❓ Q&A, as dictated by the meeting host.

If you’re joining a Google Meet call via the 🌐 web, you’ll soon notice that the ✍️ Ask Gemini prompt bar has been relocated to the bottom-left corner of the screen, instead of being hidden behind a 🖱️ button. This makes ✨ Ask Gemini more prominent and accessible, enabling you to easily see and utilise the in-meeting assistant during your calls. You can ask Gemini for 💬 conversation summaries, 📝 a list of action items, a 🏃 catch-up on what you missed and more.

Google Workspace

Google Chat

By the end of the month, Gemini in 💬 Google Chat had gained support for an additional seven languages, enabling you to use Gemini to help you ✍️ refine messages in 🇫🇷 French, 🇩🇪 German, 🇮🇹 Italian, 🇯🇵 Japanese, 🇰🇷 Korean, 🇵🇹 Portuguese and 🇪🇸 Spanish. With the “Refine” button you can ask Gemini to propose an alternate version of what you wrote – one that aims to improve clarity, spelling and more – without you needing to 🔁 switch tabs.

Gmail

✍️ Gemini’s “Help me write” in 📨 Gmail was enhanced last month. It’ll now be able to quickly generate even more personalised email drafts by pulling in relevant context from your files and folders in 🗃️ Google Drive and analysing your previously sent emails to ensure that the generated draft matches your 🖋️ writing style.

Google Docs

The ability to set custom instructions for Gemini was introduced to 📄 Google Docs near the the start of May. These instructions will guide Gemini on how to ✍️ write and 🎨 format your content across every interaction. Gemini will be able to support up to 1,000 active instructions meaning that, once set, you won’t need to keep repeating the same style requirements in every prompt. The instructions you give will serve as guidance for Gemini to ensure that all Gemini-generated output is adapted to your preferences automatically. You can add instructions directly from the Gemini side panel in Google Docs and later 🧑‍💻 manage and ✏️ edit them from your settings.

Google Drive

The ability to conduct bulk migrations of 🔐 sensitive files from cloud and on-premises data sources to Google Drive using client-side encryption was made generally available last month. The feature enables the files to be encrypted with keys that you own and manage so that your privacy can be maintained throughout the entire process.

Google Forms

In May, Google began rolling out some more options for how you can add a header image in Google Forms. In addition to 🎨 existing themes, 📂 uploading images or using 🖼️ Google Photos, you’ll soon be able to add a header image sourced directly from 🗄️ Google Drive, 🔎 Google Images and 🌐 by a URL. This avoids the need to first download and then reupload content to Forms, allowing you to create personalised forms more easily.

Gemini

Towards the end of the month, Google added a new way for you to share 📸 snapshots of your 💬 Gemini conversations, 🖼️ canvases and 🎬 media using Google Drive. The sharing interface will follow the same rules as 📄 Docs and 📈 Sheets, meaning that Gemini content on the web that’s shared via Drive will be protected by your organisation's existing Drive sharing policies. This ensures that your data remains safe whilst making sharing more accessible.

NotebookLM

An update to NotebookLM, introduced at the end of the month, will soon automatically keep 🗄️ Google Drive files in sync. This means that, when there are changes to the Google Docs, Sheets and Slides files used within your research, those updates will be automatically reflected in your notebooks. This ensures that you're always working with the latest information. Drive and NotebookLM will also respect ❌ file deletions and ✅ permission changes in real-time, updating your access if anything changes.

Google Vids

In the middle of the month, Google added the ability for you to select an 🤖 AI avatar to act as a 🎤 presenter for your converted Google Slides presentations in Google Vids. The avatars will be present from your very first draft rather than be something that you need to add after the initial import has been completed. The dynamic avatars will appear throughout the generated video, in addition to 🖼️ visuals, 🎶 background music and 🗣️ voiceovers, narrating your 📜 script to make the content more engaging.

Google Chrome

To help save time when using Gemini, you’ll now be able to save your favourite ✍️ Gemini prompts as skills in Chrome. This means that when you’re in need of Gemini’s assistance in Chrome you can very easily apply a saved prompt from the ✨ Ask Gemini ✨ side panel without having to keep repeating the same instructions.

Google Workspace Studio

Last month, Google added several new tools into Google Workspace Studio that enable you to incorporate more 📹 Google Meet and 📅 Google Calendar features within your automated workflows. With this update, you can now trigger a flow when Gemini 📝 meeting notes or 📜 meeting transcripts have been created following a meeting. You can then apply the flow that's triggered by these meeting artefacts to up to 100 different meetings, instead of needing one flow per meeting. You’ll also be able to have a flow automatically 🕐 block time in your calendar, which can be useful in flows that are notifying you about a task to be done, immediately giving you some 🎧 focus time to work on it.

A 📓 NotebookLM integration was added to Google Workspace Studio in the middle of May, allowing you to use your research notebooks as part of your automated workflows. Instead of receiving a general answer, the new “Ask NotebookLM” step will use the 📚 information within your notebooks to provide you with responses grounded in your research.

Google Workspace Studio then gained support for an additional seven languages: 🇫🇷 French, 🇩🇪 German, 🇮🇹 Italian, 🇯🇵 Japanese, 🇰🇷 Korean, 🇵🇹 Portuguese and 🇪🇸 Spanish. Previously limited to English, more languages mean that the automated workflow tool is now accessible to more people.

Google Admin Panel

A new ✨ AI Control Center was added to the admin panel at the start of the month. It provides a centralised location for 🧑‍💻 admins to view and manage how Gemini and other agents interact with your Workspace data within a variety of apps, including 🗃️ Drive, ✉️ Gmail and 💬 Chat. From the control centre, admins can 📈 monitor usage, 🔒 enforce granular security policies, maintain 🛡️ data protections and more. This makes it much easier to ensure that the AI tools being used are compliant with your company’s policies.

Google then launched a new feature in beta that will help small businesses migrate from Microsoft to Google Workspace. By connecting your Microsoft account, the system can automatically identify existing profiles and allow you to import up to 👥 10 Microsoft users into your new Google Workspace environment.

Admins can now also set a global context-aware access (CAA) policy for all SAML apps within your organisation. This creates a default, universal security baseline without needing to define policies for each application individually – though you can still choose to create a custom policy for an app which will override this default.

Towards the end of the month, in order to help 🔒 protect sensitive data, Out-of-Domain file-level warnings (the “External” badges) were made visible in more places, including: the Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides 📱 mobile apps; in file sharing and comment ✉️ email notifications; and within 💬 Chat Spaces and Google Groups.

Admins also gained more granular control over workflows created in Google Workspace Studio. Specifically, the update that rolled out at the end of the month lets you ❌ disable or ✅ enable which of the Workspace apps and features can be used as starters and steps, customising the settings by group or OU.

Google Workspace Logos

In the middle of May, Google began rolling out a new set of logos for Google Workspace applications. If you haven’t already, you’ll soon see the changes across Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Meet, Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets, Vids, Keep, Forms, Voice, Sites and Tasks.

Catch up on April’s updates

Do you want to see what happened in April? You can catch up on all of the updates across Google Meet and Google Workspace in our April 2026 recap.

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