After introducing for paid Advanced subscribers last year, free Gemini users are starting to get the ability to upload and analyze files.
Once rolled out, you’ll see an “Upload files to get quick summaries and actionable insights” prompt. Tapping the ‘plus’ menu reveals Files and Drive joins the existing Camera and Gallery. This is appearing in the Android app and gemini.google.com.
You can browse your Google Drive or upload directly from the web or mobile app. Gemini lets you upload documents to ask questions about it, which amounts to advanced search, and get summaries about the content. Spreadsheets can also be shared for insights, while you can ask Gemini to create charts.
The following file formats are supported:
- Plain text files: TXT
- Code files including C, CPP, PY, JAVA, PHP, SQL, and HTML
- Document files: DOC, DOCX, PDF, RTF, DOT, DOTX, HWP, HWPX
- Documents created in Google Docs
- Tabular data files: CSV, TSV
- Spreadsheet files: XLS, XLSX
- Spreadsheets created in Google Sheets
Google has yet to update support documents for this feature, so it’s unclear what the context window is. For Gemini Advanced, it’s 1 million tokens, which translates to 1,500 pages of text or 30,000 lines of code.
On Android, document upload enables “Ask about this PDF” in Files by Google and “Talk Like about this” (on Pixel and Galaxy S24/S25).
File upload is rolling out to free Gemini accounts this evening and not yet widely available. It only works with Gemini 2.0 Flash and not the older 1.5 Flash model, which will soon be removed. Google first introduced file upload for Gemini Advanced in May of 2024 with the launch of 1.5 Pro.
Other Gemini features that still require an Advanced subscription include Deep Research, building custom Gems, Saved Info, and Recall.
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