Gemini Gems Are Going Away: Skills Replace Them in November 2026

If you have built a Gem in the Gemini app, Google is taking the feature away and giving you something different in its place. Its help centre now says that starting in November 2026, Gems will transition to skills in Gemini Apps. The good news is that you do not have to do anything to keep your work: Google says it will convert your Gems for you. The part worth knowing before November is that skills cannot yet do several things Gems can.

Key Takeaways

• Gems go away in November 2026 for anyone signing in with a personal Google Account. That is the date Google publishes.
• Work and school accounts get longer. Workspace business, enterprise and non-profit accounts keep Gems until March 2027; Workspace education accounts until June 2027.
• Your Gems are not deleted. Google says "we'll automatically transition your Gems to skills for you when Gems go away," along with supported files. You can also do it manually now.
• Skills work differently in one genuinely useful way. You type / followed by a skill name inside any chat, instead of switching to a separate Gem. Gemini can also apply one automatically, and you can stack several at once.
• Five things Gems do that skills do not, yet: Create video, Create music, Canvas, Deep Research and Guided Learning. Google lists all five as not working with skills "for now."
• You need Keep Activity switched on to create or use skills. That is a privacy setting, and it is in Google's requirements list rather than the headline.
• Opal is going too, along with Gems by Google Labs, at the same time in November 2026.
• No plan requirement is stated. Google's skills requirements name age and account type only, and its plan comparison table still ticks Gems on every tier including no AI plan.

What Is Actually Changing

A Gem is a saved custom version of Gemini that you open from a list and then talk to. A skill is a saved set of instructions that lives inside your ordinary chat. Google's own summary of why it prefers the second: skills "let you do more, like using them right in your current chat without having to switch tabs," and you "can also stack multiple skills together."

Google also notes the change is gradual: "We're gradually making skills available in Gemini chats, starting with personal Google Accounts, so they might not be available in your chats just yet."

The Dates, by Account Type

These are Google's published dates, and they are the only ones it gives. There is no day of the month attached to any of them.

Opal, Google's experiment for building mini apps, and Gems by Google Labs both stop "at the same time in November."

What You Lose, and It Is Not Nothing

This is the part Google puts in an FAQ rather than at the top. Its words: "most default tools that are available in Gems do not work with skills," and it then lists them:

• Create video
• Create music
• Canvas
• Deep research
• Guided learning

So if your Gem is a research assistant that leans on Deep Research, or a writing Gem you use inside Canvas, the skill version of it will not do that when the switch happens. Google says skills do work with Connected Apps including Workspace apps.

Google's answer to whether this gap closes is "Yes. In the coming weeks, skills will have the features you loved in Gems, including the ability to share them with others and add files from Google Drive and notebooks from Gemini Notebook." That sentence covers sharing and files. It does not name Canvas, Deep Research, video, music or Guided Learning, and Google has not given a date for any of them.

What You Have to Switch On

Three requirements, from Google's own list, and the third catches people out.

1. Be 18 or over.
2. Sign in with a personal Google Account. Work and school accounts cannot use skills yet, which is presumably why those accounts keep Gems until 2027.
3. Have Keep Activity on. This is the setting that lets Google store your Gemini activity in your account. If you have deliberately turned it off, skills will not work for you, and Google does not offer an alternative.

Skills are also limited by device for now: the Gemini mobile app, the Gemini app on Mac, and the web app at gemini.google.com. Google's Windows app, released September 10, 2026, is not on that list. Uploading a file or folder to create a skill is narrower still: Mac app and web only.

Is It Free?

Google has not published a plan requirement, and two surfaces point the same way. The skills requirements list names age and account type only, with no mention of a Google AI subscription. And Google's plan comparison table, decoded September 28, 2026, still ticks Gems for "Without a Google AI plan" as well as AI Plus, AI Pro and AI Ultra, and carries no row for skills at all.

That absence is worth naming rather than reading into. Google answers plan questions by adding a row to that table, so the honest position today is that skills have no stated plan gate and the table has not caught up. We will re-check it, and this page will say so when a row appears.

What To Do Before November

If you have Gems you care about, you do not have to act. Google's commitment is explicit: your Gems, and supported files attached to them, become skills automatically.

Convert one by hand now if you want to test it. Google's instructions run to three steps: open the Gem and download each Knowledge file individually, create the skill at Settings then Skills on gemini.google.com and paste the name, description and instructions across, then download the skill's SKILL.md, put it in a folder with your files, and use Replace skill to upload the folder. The folder name must exactly match the skill name.

Download your Knowledge files either way. There is no bulk export for them before the automatic transition, and GitHub files are not supported in skills at all. If a Gem of yours depends on a GitHub file, that is the one thing on this page with no migration path.

If a Gem depends on Deep Research, Canvas, video, music or Guided Learning, plan for it to stop working. Those are the five Google names, and it has not said when they come back.

If you use Opal, the same November date applies. Google points to the Opal FAQ for detail.

How We Dated This

Google does not print a publication date on this help article, and nothing else dates it: there is no blog.google post about it, the Gemini release notes have not moved past September 10, 2026, and the Internet Archive has never captured the page. What we can date is when it appeared. Google's Gemini help centre index listed 93 articles on September 27, 2026, with 18365638 the highest id; on September 28, 2026 it listed 98, and this article, id 18560919, is higher than every id present the day before. So it went up between those two dates. We have not put a vendor date on this page because Google has not published one.