Google Gave Your Gmail 3 Actually Useful Gemini Features for Free

Not that any of us expected Google to dial back on the Gemini push as we enter 2026, but I’m also not sure I anticipated them giving away several features for free to Gmail. And not just any features either, we’re talking about a handful of Gemini tools that you’ll probably use at some point.

Google announced today that it is giving all Gmail users a more powerful search with AI Overviews, Help Me Write, and Suggested Replies.

Gmail: AI Overviews, Help Me Write, Suggested Replies

The AI Overviews feature in search will be truly useful at times, since so many of us have had our Gmail accounts for a decade+ and those archives run deep. Google will now let you search within Gmail using more natural language about a subject or idea or whatever it is you need to find without having to be so short and precise in your search terms. Using Gemini, Gmail will then try to return an AI Overview of the information with a summary of “the exact details you need.”

In the image above, you can see an example where Google asked Gmail to find a plumber it had received a bathroom renovation quote from the previous year. Gmail then returned a summary or AI Overview with the companies who provided quotes, prices from the quotes, and then marked one as a recommendation. The summary also provides shortcuts to the emails as little footnote markers.

For the other two free features, Google is giving everyone access to Help Me Write and Suggested Replies. These are pretty self explanatory by name, but the Help Me Write feature is there for those who need to quickly draft an email from scratch or polish up one you’ve already written. Next month, this should start to return more personalized responses thanks to context from other Google apps.

As for Suggested Replies, this is AI trying to speak for you in a way. At the bottom of an email thread, in the reply box, you’ll see these pop-up and should be “in your tone and style,” according to Google. Below, you can see what these look like. Obviously, you can not take the suggestion, delete it, and then write your own reply.

Finally, Google also announced that an upgraded Proofread feature is on the way for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. This new version of Proofread includes advanced grammar, tone, and style checks.

All of these features will begin rolling out as early as today.

// Google