Google Gemini starts turning your Gems into skills on November 17

Google is replacing Gems in Gemini. The custom assistants with saved instructions, available since August 2024, are becoming skills. Gemini already shows a banner above the Gem manager, including in the German interface, saying that Google will start migrating Gems to skills automatically on November 17, 2026, and that they keep working until they are migrated. According to Google's help page, November applies to personal accounts. Workspace business, enterprise and non-profit accounts follow in March 2027, education accounts in June 2027.

What happens automatically

You do not need to do anything. Google says it will "automatically transition your Gems, along with any supported files, to skills." That covers custom, premade and shared Gems. The help page does not say which files are unsupported, and for Gems with knowledge files it advises downloading them first. If you do not want to wait, you can manually recreate your Gems as skills now. The way you use them changes as well. Instead of opening a Gem from the sidebar, you type a slash in the chat and pick a skill, and according to 9to5Google you can combine several at once.

Keep Activity becomes a requirement

Google's skills help page lists two requirements. Skills are only available to people over 18 with a personal Google account, and Keep Activity has to be on. For Gems, Google so far only asks for that setting if you add files from Google Drive. If you turned Keep Activity off for privacy reasons, check before November 17 whether you will be able to use your converted skills at all. With the setting on, chats stay in your account, and reviewers at Google may read some of them and keep them for up to three years.

No skills in Germany yet

It is unclear whether skills will be ready in Europe by the deadline. In a quick test with a free account in Germany on September 29, the "Create skills" button in the Gem manager did nothing, and typing a slash in the chat opened no menu. Android Authority and 9to5Google report that skills are currently limited to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. Google has not yet told Android Authority whether free accounts, which have had access to Gems, will get skills too. Google has already kept its Spark agent out of Europe, and the Gemini app for Windows launched without it.