How to use Google Gemini: the app, Gems and skills, Gmail and Docs

Before you start

You need a Google Account: a personal one, a school one, or a work account on a qualifying Workspace edition, where you must be 18 or over. Use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera or Edge.

Gemini inside Gmail and Docs needs an eligible Google Workspace or Google AI plan. A personal account can try some of it through Google Workspace Experiments, a trusted tester program.

Two words matter here. A Gem is a saved set of instructions, with optional files, that shapes Gemini's answers for one kind of job. A skill does the same job and is replacing the Gem. Menu names follow Google's help pages as they read on 5 November 2026.

Your first Gemini chat

Pick a small job from today. The prompt below is ours: it hands Gemini a pasted list and asks for a plan you can act on before lunch.

Here are the tasks on my list for this week.
Sort them into "must do", "should do" and "can wait", and give each a one-line reason.
Then suggest which two I should start on Monday morning.

[paste your list here]

1. Go to gemini.google.com and sign in.
2. Type or paste your prompt in the text box at the bottom. To add a file or an image, click Add files.
3. Click Submit. Gemini picks a model for the prompt by itself. Once signed in, you can choose one from the menu instead.
4. Reply to reshape the answer. Ask for shorter reasons or a plan laid out from Monday to Friday, and the same list comes back in a new form.

Save a prompt you repeat: Gems and skills

Pasting the same setup at the top of every chat is the sign you need one. To make a Gem on a computer, open the sidebar at gemini.google.com and click Gems. The first time, go through Settings and help, then Gems.

Click New Gem and enter a name and instructions. Under Knowledge, click Add files to attach files from your device, from Google Drive or a whole NotebookLM notebook. Drive files need Keep Activity on and Workspace connected. Test it first: enter a prompt on the right and click Submit. Then click Save.

Personal accounts are moving off Gems. Google's transition page says Google recreates each Gem as a skill automatically, on the dates below. To move one by hand, copy its name, description and instructions into a new skill.

Skills live in the sidebar under Customize, then Skills, and Customize may hide under More. To build one by hand, click Create, then Create manually, paste the name, description and instructions, and click Create. In a chat, type / and the skill's name to call it, a key Google is changing to @. Gemini can also pick a skill on its own when a prompt fits, and one chat can use several.

A skill is stored as a folder with a SKILL.md file in it. That is the format Agent Skills use in Claude and other assistants too, so the idea carries across apps.

Gemini in Gmail and Docs

In Gmail on a computer, Ask Gemini sits at the top right. Click it, and a panel opens on the right. Write your request at the bottom of that panel and send it with Submit. It can turn a long thread into bullet points or draft a new email. It can also polish your own draft, find a detail such as a flight time and book a meeting from your Google Calendar availability.

Nothing in your inbox changes until you confirm. Even then, you get 60 seconds to undo the action. A request that matches more than 10,000 threads is not processed, so narrow it by sender or date. The email lesson covers the prompt behind a usable draft and the checks to run before sending.

Google Docs has the same button in its top right corner, and it opens a side panel with suggested prompts. Click Sources in the bottom bar to point it at other files. Then insert what it writes.

To rework a passage, click Refine on the floating bar. Match writing style, Enhance and Rephrase come first, with Shorten, Elaborate, More formal and More casual under More. Accept all keeps the changes and Reject all drops them.

What Google posted when NotebookLM became Gemini Notebook

On 16 July 2026, Google's main account posted on X that NotebookLM was now Gemini Notebook. The post called it the same standalone product under a new name, and said it would do more across Google, inside the Gemini app and Google Search included.

That move matters for this lesson. A Gem's Knowledge field already takes a whole notebook, so a research notebook can stand behind a Gem you use every week. Both names point to the same notebook, so a help page that still says NotebookLM means Gemini Notebook.

Build the notebook first, with the sources the job depends on, as the NotebookLM tutorial shows. Then attach it under Knowledge when you make the Gem. On a personal account, open the skill Google makes from that Gem and check what came across.

A screenshot of X's own embed of the post, taken on 5 November 2026, with the time in UTC. X cuts the post short with Show more. Select it to open the post on X.

Common mistakes

• Building a new Gem on a personal account this month. It turns read-only within weeks. Make a skill.
• Asking Gmail's Gemini about something on the web without saying "Use Google Search". Web answers need that phrase in the prompt.
• Closing a Doc while Gemini's draft is still in the side panel. Refreshing, closing the document or going offline wipes that history.
• Taking a thread summary's figure as fact. Google says suggestions may be inaccurate, so open the email the number came from.

Try it yourself

• Run the weekly task prompt with your own list, then ask for one change to it.
• Make a Gem or a skill for one email you write every week, and use it twice.
• In Gmail, ask Gemini to summarize your longest thread, then read its last three emails yourself and compare.
• In a Google Doc, Refine one paragraph with More formal, and use Reject all if you prefer your original.

Next course: Write with AI

Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude can all draft text for you, and readers have learned to spot text a model wrote alone. How to draft with AI opens the course on writing from your own notes, editing without losing your voice and what AI detectors can and cannot tell.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Google: Use Gemini Apps (read November 5, 2026)https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/13275745?hl=en
2. Google: Use Gems in Gemini Apps (read November 5, 2026)https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/15146780?hl=en
3. Google: About the transition from Gems to skills (read November 5, 2026)https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/18560919?hl=en
4. Google: Collaborate with Gemini in Gmail (read November 5, 2026)https://support.google.com/mail/answer/14199860?hl=en
5. Google: Collaborate with Gemini in Google Docs (read November 5, 2026)https://support.google.com/docs/answer/14206696?hl=en
6. Google (@Google) on X: NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook (read November 5, 2026)https://x.com/Google/status/2077812135556497471