New update revolutionizes how you use Gmail, Keep, and Docs

Published Sep 4, 2026, 7:25 AM EDT I've been covering Android and other mobile technology for close to ten years now, with a specific interest in phone accessories, e-readers, and what makes each individual phone different from another. I delight in looking at the phone market from as many angles as possible, and while my opinions may be odd, at times, they're always from the heart as much as the head. I have a background in the mobile accessories world, which explains my odd enthusiasm for cases and things that clip onto smartphones. I worked for Digital Trends from 2017 to 2025. Sign in to your Android Police account Gemini's natural conversation mode, known as "Live" has arrived in Gmail, Docs, and Keep. This means you can talk to your inbox or documents, instead of manually searching for information or reading through emails and notes. It's a natural evolution of Gemini's capabilities, though it's currently only available to people paying for one of Google's AI plans. Ask questions and follow-ups in a natural way Live shows Gemini's strengths Credit: 9to5 Google Gemini Live, if you haven't heard of it, is a mode of Gemini that uses the AI's continued conversation abilities to keep up a rolling conversation. Simply put, it opens up its microphone and just listens, and doesn't close it after you're done talking. As such, you can ask it a question, listen to the answer, ask a follow-up question, interrupt the answer it's giving you to clarify, and so on. It's a more natural way to converse with an unnatural intelligence, and it can be useful in certain situations. Gemini Live has been available for some time now, and Google showed off its expansion of Live to other apps at Google I/O in May. And now, it's rolling out to Android and iOS phones. Each Live works slightly differently, depending on the app you're using. Gmail Live is essentially a spoken search, and it will help you narrow down where certain details can be found. Docs Live can do the same, but Google is positioning it more as a way to write up a first draft. It can pull information from other Google apps to accomplish this, and it'll list everything it's going to write about before it starts. Keep Live is, unsurprisingly, all about making notes. But this is perhaps the handiest. It can listen to your stream of consciousness and create a legible note from it, or split it into different notes. You can also ask it to add the ingredients for pesto to your shopping list and it'll add the individual items as needed. Of the lot, it's Keep Live that attracts me the most. Gmail Live is extremely situational, and honestly just a fancier search function. As a professional writer, you can probably guess why I'm not too keen on Docs Live writing my first draft. That's my rubbish first draft, and you won't touch it. But Keep Live? I take notes all the time, and that could actually be useful. Unfortunately for me, my trial to Google AI Pro has just ended, so I don't have access to it at the moment. But if Google adds more cool ideas like this, it might just tempt me into Google AI Plus.