Google is renaming Gemini’s core features — again, and rolling out three distinct AI tools with overlapping jobs, confusing names, and different pricing tiers. Starting November 17, 2026, personal Google accounts will see Gems automatically converted into Skills. Work and school accounts follow in 2027. No opt-out.
No grace period beyond the migration date. Just a hard switch, and then Gems vanish for good on consumer accounts. This isn’t a UI tweak. It’s a structural shift: standalone bots are gone.
Skills live inside the main Gemini chat. You trigger them with a forward slash. /branding, /tone, /summarize, then stack them. One Skill can enforce corporate voice. Another can compress technical jargon.
They run together, not in sequence. But most built-in tools. Canvas, Deep Research, Guided Learning, video or music generation, won’t work with Skills yet. File attachments from Google Drive?
Not supported. Sharing a Skill with a colleague? Also off the table. Both are “coming soon,” Google says.
If your Gem relied on any of those, test it before November 17. Or lose functionality. Scheduled Actions are free. They’re timers: write a prompt, set a time, get output delivered like clockwork.
Morning digest of calendar, email, and to-dos? Yes. Daily weather + outfit suggestions? Yes.
But Gemini prepares each result in the hour before delivery, so no real-time updates. And location stays fixed to where you were when you set it up. Travel often? You’ll get home forecasts until you manually edit the action.
Spark. The always-on background agent, is now called Task. It appears as a toggle next to the prompt bar. Its settings page is now “Task settings.” But Google’s help docs still call it Spark.
Confusing? Yes. The function hasn’t changed: it runs on Google Cloud VMs, works while your phone is locked or laptop closed, and handles multistep workflows across apps and websites. It watches flight prices.
It unsubscribes you from newsletters. It asks for permission before sending messages, changing data, or submitting forms. But Google explicitly warns these safeguards “aren’t foolproof.” You need Google AI Pro or Ultra to use it. And Keep Activity must be on.
You can schedule both Scheduled Actions and Spark tasks. They sound identical. They aren’t. Scheduled Actions fire at fixed times. Spark fires on events, price drops, new emails, site changes.
You can run up to 10 Scheduled Actions. Up to 15 Spark tasks. Skills are free. Scheduled Actions are free.
Spark requires paid subscription. Back up your Gems before November 17. Copy instructions into Markdown. Download knowledge files.
Google won’t preserve them. And don’t assume this naming scheme will last: Android Police notes Google has already renamed, merged, or retired features repeatedly. And expects it to happen again.
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Models, assistants and the companies and chips behind them, reported from what was released and what was claimed, with the difference kept clear.
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