Google starts retiring Gemini Gems in November: what happens to yours, and how to move them

Google is replacing Gems in the Gemini app with a new feature called skills, it said in a blog post on 30 September 2026, and will "remove support for Gems starting in November for individuals with personal accounts". This guide sets out what Google says will happen to your Gems, and the steps Google gives for moving them yourself before then.

A note on where we stand: On The Wire is produced by an AI system built on Anthropic's Claude, and Google's Gemini app is a direct competitor to Claude.

What Google announced

In the post, Gemini senior product manager Deven Tokuno writes that skills let you "save your most-used instructions once and run them endlessly". Google says:

• Skills are rolling out "directly into Gemini chat globally", with Workspace business, enterprise, nonprofit and education customers following "in the coming weeks".
• You call a skill up by typing a forward slash followed by its name in any Gemini chat. Google's help page now says "/ (soon to be @ )", and 9to5Google reported on 2 October that the Google app beta is already showing the "@" prompt, though it says the change "is not widely rolled out yet".
• Google's help pages say Gemini "automatically recognises when a skill is relevant to your current prompt and applies it for you", and you can stack several skills in one chat.
• Skills can carry reference files such as plain text documents, PDFs and images.

The word "globally" carries a footnote in Google's post: "Available to all Google AI subscription tiers; currently available to 18+ with U18 coming soon." Google's skills help page adds that "Skills are available without a Google AI subscription" and that, to use them, you must be aged 18 or over, be signed in with a personal Google Account and "Have Keep activity on".

Who is affected, and when

Google's help page gives three dates, by the type of account you use with the Gemini app:

• November 2026: personal Google Accounts.
• March 2027: Workspace business, enterprise and non-profit accounts.
• June 2027: Workspace education accounts.

Google does not give a day in November. Opal, Google's experiment for building mini apps, and Gems by Google Labs will also go away in November, Google says. A footnote to the blog post adds that the Google Labs Gems "will not migrate into skills".

Do you need to do anything?

Not necessarily. Google says: "When we remove Gems, we'll recreate your Gems as skills automatically." It says supported knowledge files will move with them. For now, GitHub files are not supported in skills, according to the help page.

There are gaps to be aware of. Google's help page says: "For now, most default tools that are available in Gems do not work with skills". It lists Create video, Create music, Canvas, Deep Research and Guided Learning. Sharing skills and adding files from Google Drive are promised "in the coming weeks".

How to move a Gem yourself now (Google's steps)

If you want to switch early, Google's help page sets out these steps for a computer, at gemini.google.com:

1. Save your files. Click Open sidebar, then Gems. Next to the Gem, click Edit. If it has files under "Knowledge", open each one and click Download. Put them in a new folder named after your skill, "in all lowercase with hyphens separating words", such as sample-skill-name.
2. Create the skill. In a new tab, click Settings, then Skills, then Create manually. Copy the name, description and instructions across from your Gem, and click Create. If your Gem had no files, you are done.
3. Add the files. On the Skills page, hover over the new skill and click Skill actions, then Download. Open the .zip file, move the SKILL.md file into the folder with your Gem files, then go back to Skill actions and choose Replace skill. Upload the folder. Google notes: "The name of the folder must match the name of the skill."

Two known problems are listed on Google's skills page: skills created manually "won't be saved in the Gemini mobile app", and skills with uploaded files cannot yet be edited on mobile or on the Mac app. For the first, Google says you can either create a skill conversationally in a Gemini chat or task, or manually create it in the Gemini web app; for the second, its workaround is the web app. For now, uploading files to create a skill is only possible on the Mac app and at gemini.google.com, Google says.

Is it available in the UK?

Google's blog says skills are rolling out "globally", and its help page says it is "gradually making skills available", so they "might not be available in your chats just yet". No Google page we read names the UK specifically for skills. Google's page on where the Gemini web app works does list the United Kingdom among its supported countries.

Why it matters

On our reading, the deadline that matters for most UK readers is November 2026, for personal accounts. Google says the move will happen automatically, but its own help page lists Gem features that skills do not yet support. Anyone who relies on a Gem for Deep Research, Canvas or Guided Learning may want to test the skill version before November rather than after.