Google may retire Gems in October, forcing migration to Skills

Google appears to be preparing to retire Gems on October 20, based on a notice behind a feature flag in the Gemini web app, advising users to save data and suggesting they may rebuild Gems as skills. The retirement would move a free customization layer behind Gemini Spark, which requires a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription and is unavailable in the EEA, UK, Switzerland, and Nigeria, sparking sharp reaction from Korean users with large Gem libraries.

Google appears to be preparing to retire Gems on October 20, based on a notice currently behind a feature flag in the Gemini https://www.testingcatalog.com/tag/gemini/ web app that has not been shown to anyone yet. The wording advises users to save their data and suggests they may later be able to rebuild their Gems as skills, implying that skills are intended to be broadly available by that date. Google has not commented publicly, and a flagged banner is not a commitment, so the timing could still move. The gap between the two formats is what makes this awkward. Gems are free for everyone and sit in the Gemini sidebar. Skills live inside Gemini Spark https://www.testingcatalog.com/google-unveils-24-7-gemini-spark-ai-agent-for-advanced-tasks/ , require a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription, are limited to personal accounts rather than work or school ones, and stay unavailable in the European Economic Area, the UK, Switzerland, and Nigeria. Spark only reached Pro subscribers across 160-plus countries at the end of July. Retiring Gems on those terms would move a free customization layer behind a paid, region-limited agent product. The reaction to our post was sharpest among Korean users, who have built large Gem libraries. The notice implies no automated migration, so heavy users may need to rebuild each one by hand. Google probably has tooling planned, and rivals already let people author reusable instruction files in minutes, but that still leaves manual reconstruction. Enterprise is the harder question. Google has spent two years pitching Gems for workplace use, grounded in Drive and Gmail, while skills do not support work or school accounts at all. Any deadline reaching Gemini Enterprise customers would land as a migration project rather than a settings change. It would also be the second reshuffle of this surface in under a year, following the folding of Opal workflows into the Gems manager as Super Gems in December. The feedback so far is consistent: "Automate the conversion." Source: Tomas https://x.com/thomas gmry?ref=testingcatalog.com