Get the most out of Google's AI assistant.
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AI chatbots like Gemini have become quite popular for their ability to answer questions, but they can do much more than that. When it comes to Google's Gemini, you can also use it to schedule and automate tasks without having to handle them manually every time. For example, you can ask Gemini to check your calendar every day to calculate how much time you'll have between appointments, or even to constantly check for updates on a specific website. And if you pay for Google AI Pro or Ultra, Gemini Spark can reach into your inbox and calendar too. Once you've set up Gemini, here are a few things you can try first to automate your daily tasks.
Check your day for travel trouble
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As mentioned in the example above, Gemini is great for helping you manage your daily commitments. Ask it to check your calendars every morning and give you an estimate of how much time you'll spend moving between each event. Try a prompt like, "Check my events for the day and estimate total travel and driving time using Maps every morning at 7:30AM." Of course, this will only work if you have all the relevant apps — like your calendar and email — connected to Gemini. Just be aware that Google may not take real-time traffic data into account, since it will use the data it has at the time the answer is generated. It's always a good idea to check the route on Maps before you leave.
Get a daily briefing on the latest news
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You can also ask Gemini to keep you up to date on a specific topic, like something you're personally interested in or monitoring for work. It can search the web at a set time and provide you with a summary of what it thinks is most important. A prompt like, "Every morning at 9AM, search for the latest news about Apple" is a good example. Google's own examples often feature daily and weekly summaries like this one. However, you can only run up to 10 scheduled actions at a time, so you might want to save them for important searches. You'll also receive a notification once your results are ready.
Plan the weekend before it starts
If you like getting suggestions for things to do on the weekends, Gemini can help you with that, too. Ask it to suggest an itinerary with different places to have dinner every Friday and Saturday. Give it access to your location so it knows where you are and can search for nearby places without you even having to tell it. It's a great way to discover new cafes and restaurants every week. Try a prompt like, "Every Friday morning, plan my weekend with different ideas for cafes and restaurants to visit." Scheduled actions will not use your current location if you're traveling — it will use the location it accessed when you first set up the action.
Turn repeat prompts into skills
With Gemini, you can also define a set of instructions using skills, which are replacing Gems, to remember preferences across different conversations. Let's say you're working on a weekly newsletter and you need to follow institutional brand guidelines to ensure that the content aligns with the brand's communications. Just create a skill with all the instructions, and use the command to trigger that skill. Every time you use it, Gemini will apply the brand guidelines you've defined without you having to list them every time you want to generate your newsletter. Using skills is as simple as entering a command like "/skillname" in your Gemini chat. Google says that soon you'll use the @ symbol to invoke a skill instead of /.
Let Spark handle your inbox
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Gemini Spark is Google's always-on agent for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, and it keeps working even when your phone and laptop are off. For example, you can have Spark scan your entire week's worth of emails and summarize the most important ones. Not only that, but it can also create a to-do list and automatically add any appointments to your calendar. No need to waste time doing all of this manually. Just make sure to connect it to Gmail, Calendar and Drive first — they're all off by default. It's as simple as going into the settings and flipping a switch on.
And don't worry, because Google says Spark is designed to check with you before taking any major actions, so it won't suddenly delete your important emails and files. One last thing: The availability of certain Gemini features may be limited to specific regions, so it's worth checking that as well.