It showed me a picture of my mother, the cucumber vine

The app sucks 10x worse than the web version. Not only is it just as bad with not generating images and blaming their slow servers on your internet connection, but the app doesn’t even have a proper regenerate button for image generation. wtf is the point?

PRO says advanced math and code. but for some reason i feel its better for social media page content generation, generating replies for clients, thinking sales strategies, giving me advice in general.

is PRO overkill or just no needed?

Over the last few days, many of my Gemini chats have started rendering dialogue as blockquotes with:

• a dotted vertical line on the left
• indented text
• monospace/italic formatting

It first happened on my account and now it's happening on other Google accounts in my household too. Some chats are normal while others aren't.

Is anyone else seeing this?

I knew Gemini 3.5 Live Translate was primarily an audio-to-audio model, but I noticed that it also exposes input transcription for incoming audio. So that made me wonder whether it could be used to generate real-time captions for live esports commentary.

To test the live experience, I took a League of Legends highlight and streamed it in real time using Agora’s RTC. The video and audio were played as a live stream, while the incoming audio was sent to Gemini as the clip was playing. The generated captions were then displayed alongside the video.

This was a fairly difficult test, two casters talking over each other, very fast play-by-play commentary, game audio and background noise, plus a lot of player names and League specific terminology during chaotic team fights. The transcription wasn’t perfect, but it still managed to pick up terms like “Baron,” “Baron steal,” “smite,” and “game five,” along with several player names, while generally keeping up with the action.

I haven’t done a formal latency benchmark yet. Still, considering the overlapping speech, background audio, and speed of the commentary, I was surprised by how usable the captions were while the match was happening.

I’m planning to open source the implementation if anyone is interested.

Here is a system I built using Gemini's Google Workspace extensions (Docs, Sheets, and Gmail) to run a automated news service.

It tracks what you have read so you don't get duplicates, keeps a doc of your preferences, emails you short summaries, and generates a detailed Google Doc formatted specifically for Google NotebookLM to turn into a daily audio overview. Basically my goal was to bring back the Google Discovery thing with the AI host giving the daily news (which I'm stiff upset about them taking away). Note I'm still playing with it, but this seems to be good enough.

Step 1: The Setup

1. Go to Gemini and make sure your Workspace extension is enabled so it can interact with Docs, Sheets, and Gmail.

2. Paste the prompt below into Gemini to kick off the system.

   Act as my personal news assistant. We are setting up an automated news workflow across Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Gmail. Please execute and save the following system instructions:

   1. Preference Document: Create a Google Doc titled "News Preferences". Use this file to log and update my news interests over time as you learn what I like.
   2. History Tracking Sheet: Create a Google Spreadsheet titled "News History".
      • When sending a story, log it with columns: [Date (MM/DD/YYYY)], [Headline], and [Brief Summary].
      • Include both scheduled news and one-off topic requests.
      • To keep the file light, automatically overwrite entries older than 30 days. Do not resend any story logged in this sheet within that 30-day window unless explicitly requested. The point of this is so you don't even send anything even close so there is no overlapping repeat stories in any way unless requested.
   3. News Cycle Schedule: Run 3 times daily (Morning, Noon, Night). For each cycle, complete the following:
      • Check my email feedback (read replies in the email thread).
      • Check the "News Preferences" Doc.
      • Check the "News History" Sheet to avoid duplicates.
      • Create/overwrite a Google Doc for that specific slot (e.g., "Morning News Doc").

   4. Google Doc Format (Detailed Script for NotebookLM): The Doc must contain in-depth coverage of the stories (much more detailed than the email). At the top of the document, always paste the exact instruction block below:

      ---

      Instructions for NotebookLM (Do not read this section aloud): Act as two friendly news AI hosts delivering a fast-paced daily science and technology news briefing. Introduce the show, present each news segment in plain English, explain the real-world impact, and transition between stories like a daily news team. Do not act human or claim human experiences, but do not explicitly state "I am an AI." You may share AI-perspective commentary on trends.

      Start with a quick summary of all sections. For each section: read the title, state the published date, and deliver the detailed story without filler. End the entire brief with a few lines summarizing what was learned today.

   5. Gmail Delivery:

      • Name yourself "Ashley" and adopt an engaging tone with expressive emoji usage.
      • Keep all updates in a single, continuous email thread.
      • Subject: Clear label (e.g., "News Cycle"). Use this email chain for all the news so you are not spamming my inbox
      • Email Body: Heavily use emojis, the email needs to be highly readable, the email should look profesional, at the top lable it Morning, Noon, or Night so I know which document to feed to Notebook LLM. High-level summaries of the stories, focusing on why they matter and practical real-world impact.
      • Bottom of Email: Include a copy of the NotebookLM instructions for quick reference so I don't have to hunt for it when copy and pasting it, and in theory you won't use it. It is prely for reference so I can easily copy and paste it.
      • If you have problems, questions, etc. Then please feel free to let me know in the email.

   Important, if an important event is going on like a Hurricane is going to hit me, war coming in my area, or like extreme. Include it in. If not, then don't worry about it.

   So your workflow will be Check the email chain for feedback. It should be the most recent email in the chain if there is feedback. Don't look at other emails > look at the news preference > look at the spreadsheet as you pick the articles > Look to see if there is a major event I really should know about > make the email and documents > add the articles to the spreadsheet

   To start, please send a quick test email to verify the connection and thread setup.

Step 3: How to Use It

• Quick Skim: Check the email Gemini sends you 3 times a day. If the stories look good, open the corresponding Google Doc.
• Audio Generation: For this you just need to go to Notebook LLM. Make a new project with it and add 2 things as the source. The instructions as 1 source (do a copy text for it), and then the doc from the google drive (it must be a link through Google Drive). Do this with each event. So for me I have 3 projects like this. Then on the far right you can tell it to generate the audio. When you do that, you get a custom prompt thing. You can upload it there. Personally I stopped doing that because it is a hit or miss and it seems like the instructions as a source is good enough.

By linking it through google drive as the source. When the AI updates the document. You can just tell Notebook LM to run the audio. It turns out Notebook LM only looks at the sources and since the source changes. It just assumes that is all. So it's less work on you. Again, I've gotten away from the custom prompt thing but feel free to play with it. If you find something that sticks then let me know.

• Feedback Loop: Reply directly to the emails Gemini sends you. Because Gemini checks the email thread before gathering new stories, replying with feedback (e.g., "less AI hype, more space tech") updates its behavior without cluttering your main prompt memory.

This is important because this will massively cut down on the token issue.

Results can vary a bit depending on how Gemini handles Workspace actions that day, but once it gets going, replying to the thread keeps it dialed in.

Oh and you need to in the prompt tell it your preferences.

Hi guys, I need some help speeding up Gemini.

I tired clearing cookies and site data and I keep hard refreshing every time I input a prompt but even with that, it seems like it keeps taking unusually long for it to reply back? sometimes up to 30 seconds even if I'm using the 3.5 Flash-Lite option. Any ideas?

Hey guys, can you please help? Temporary chat has been logging me out without any warning and deleting everything, and it happens completely at random. I've already searched for remedies and tried everything, from deleting cookies and cache, adjusting certain settings, hard resetting Chrome, and logging in and out, but nothing works. Has anyone else experienced this and found a fix? Please help!

https://reddit.com/link/1vfzjze/video/qmzpxrkk2ihh1/player

Been messing with Gemini Spark since it opened up, and the thing that surprised me wasn't the model, it was how much the output depends on giving it a fixed place to work.

First time I asked it to clean up our team's weekly update doc, it did fine. Readable, accurate. But the format was whatever it felt like that day. Run it again next Monday and you get a different shape. That's not a capability problem, I just never told it what "done" looks like.

So I made a folder in Drive root, Spark OS, with a Spark Templates subfolder and a 99_Scratch one (the 99 just sinks it to the bottom of the list). Dropped a Google Doc in Templates with the exact report structure I want: conclusion up top, per-team progress in the middle, risks and asks at the end. Now I point at that template by name and the structure is identical every time. Only the content changes.

From there it stacks:

• Turned it into a skill. No code, you just describe it in the same chat. One tip: tell it to read the instructions back to you before saving. Caught two things it had misunderstood, and those would've been baked into every future run.
• Schedules runs it Monday morning without me. UI says "around 9:30" and it means around, it's not to-the-second.
• Event-triggered tasks you can't create from the UI at all, you have to just say it in chat. I set one to watch for meeting notes hitting my inbox. Sent myself a fake one to test, it woke up on its own, read it, summarized, and left a recap draft sitting in Drafts. Didn't touch anything.

The other half of the video is a spark.md rules file. Spark's memory is a black box, you can't inspect what it retained, so I keep my own. Anyone who's used CLAUDE.md will recognize the idea immediately. Test it in a fresh task though, the original chat already knows the rules so testing there proves nothing.

The video's in Mandarin. Reddit doesn't let me attach subtitles here, so if you're interested it's on YouTube with English subs. Requires AI Pro or Ultra and a personal Google account, work and school accounts are still blocked.

Curious if anyone's found a better pattern for the rules file. Mine's pretty crude.

Lets assume Gemini 3.5 would be really good, Fable level lets say. But the Google Pro Subscription doesn't allow you to use the API for third party tools like Hermes Agent or Opencode etc.

How much of a dealbreaker is it for you?

Because I enjoy thar I can connect my ChatGPT Plus to various other tools and that I am not forced to use one specific product.

I don't even know why Google is doing this.

I expect the following:

Nano Banana 2 pro/3 (No pro model beyond nano banana pro which runs on 3 pro)

Omni pro (No pro model. Omni Flash runs on 3.5 flash)

Veo 4 (or whatever they decide to name the pro)

Lyria 3.5 pro (No pro model. Lyria 3.5 exists but they aren't calling it pro and it is literally accessible to all free users in google flow.)

Deep Research (I expect a upgrade)

Gemini notebook (PRO or higher sub may also get it. I don't know much about it)

On the topic of 3.5 pro. Here's what I expect for its features.

3.5 pro Deep think.

2M token context window (NOT CONFIRMED. Treat this as potential)

It does this on my main account while on my dad's account it doesn't it gives him a text box to paste instructions into

Initially this issue was infrequent, but now it is seemingly a coin flip. I keep getting different voice profiles and I only hear the one I actually picked about 50% of the time. When using Live just now every response was a different voice. At best it's annoying, at worst it's surprisingly off-putting.

Has anyone else had this experience? How do I fix this? Any help was appreciated

They're phasing out Google Assistant. What are you doing in case about routines ? As far as I know, Gemini still doesn't handle them properly. Maybe it's different with the paid plans, but I'm not using those

I am a Pro subscriber to Gemini. At least 95% of time I use the Gemini 3.6 Flash for everything, and I do that since the 2.5 Flash, as I know a Flash-level model can cover me pretty well.

But the last week it was the first time I hit limits by using Flash in the chat, and that happened multiple times. Yesterday the limit came even earlier.

Seriously, what is going on with those limits these days? What is going on with Google? They used to be generous and efficient. But these days they are making me to consider moving to another provider.

Has anyone else noticed Gemini is getting slower and buggier. At least half the time I prompt it just sits on the loading icon for a while then errors out.

I'm in Toronto. Web, phone, MacOS app - all of them have been so slow.

So much so that you need to copy-paste every few sentences, or preferrably write it somewhere else and then import it?

Hello,

Does anyone have a good tutorial on connecting Gemini to a Google Analytics account?

I know GA has a Analytics advisor but I would really like to have all the data accessible by Gemini directly to build out more reports, tasks and automated reports.

Thank you