Since 2024, the sparkle icon has turned up in 10 Google apps. You can’t open anything on a Google Pixel without one blinking at you.
Anyone can generate text anywhere, and Gemini can access your Drive from anywhere too. The in-app button’s edge is that it already knows, so you don’t have to tell it.
I went through the Gemini integrations most people will likely touch on their phone and in their browser and sorted them into three tiers.
Tier 1 pulls its weight. Tier 2 does a few narrow tricks but does them well. Tier 3 is a chat window that changed clothes.
The Workspace side panel proves what context is worth
The only integration I’d pay for
The unified Workspace side panel shows up in Calendar, Meet, Gmail, Docs, Drive, Sheets, and Slides.
I’m counting it once, because the same feature in five tabs is still one feature and pretending otherwise inflates the numbers.
It earns Tier 1 because of cross-document context. The March 2026 update taught Gemini to pull from multiple files, emails, chats, and the web simultaneously.
There’s a paywall. You’ll need Google AI Pro or a paid Workspace plan, but this is a rare case where paying is worth it.
Ask Photos: A decade of camera roll, now searchable
Slow, but still the future of search
Ask Photos gets Tier 2. Searching your own library in plain language is a narrow trick, and that’s worth something even if it does nothing else.
Number plate from a road trip in 2019. Done. What we ate at that place in Florence. Also found.
Running AI inference over years of photos is slower than a keyword match. Still, semantic search is the future, and this is a working preview.
Gemini in Chrome: Watching an AI do the task you could have done faster
A Tier 1 idea with a Tier 2 hit rate
Gemini in Chrome is another decent in-app AI I’ve tested. These tools should be moving from text generation to running errands on the web.
Chrome auto-browse handles tasks using your logged-in accounts and saved passwords. Google’s Chrome agent can schedule apartment inspections or grind through the tedium of booking a flight.
It’s Tier 2 because the hit rate isn’t there yet. When it works, it’s remarkable. When it doesn’t, you spend longer supervising the attempt than the task would have taken you.
The idea is Tier 1. The execution needs another year.
The Tier 3 club, where Gemini forgot why it moved in
Technically integrated, practically pointless
Ask Maps reads the reviews so you don’t have to. Half a billion contributors’ worth of them, aimed at questions a search box can’t handle.
Which climbing gym is quietest on a weeknight? Is there a pool nearby that isn’t wall-to-wall kids on a Saturday?
Answers come back as places on a map, and you can book a table, save the spot, share it, or start navigating without leaving the conversation. That’s a useful feature but still Tier 3.
Connected Apps already cover Maps. Gemini hands you a paragraph and an embedded map, then redirects you into the app to do anything with it.
Ask Maps saves you that extra step. That’s worth something, but it isn’t the transformation the launch coverage suggested.
Gemini in Google Messages and Ask Play similarly go in Tier 3, though Ask Play put up more of a fight.
These are Basic generation dressed up as a distinct feature, with no meaningful advantage over opening the Gemini app.
The curve is still moving, so watch the trajectory
Every integration here is graded on a curve that’s still moving, and not all of it is moving the same way.
Some of these integrations and their features will be unrecognizable in six months. Some will be discontinued, because that’s what Google does (RIP Stadia).
I fully expect to rewrite at least two of these verdicts before the next I/O. So treat the tiers as true as of this week.
Google will keep shipping, the grades will shift, and the revised audit will be here when they do.
