Chatting with the assistant

Start a chat, attach files, see what the assistant does, approve what it asks, and keep, find or delete your chats.

Press New chat, write what you need, and press Enter. The assistant answers as it writes, and shows each step it takes, such as reading a message or searching the web. Shift and Enter start a new line. Press Stop to end an answer early.

Choosing a model

The model's name is at the foot of the message box. Press it to choose another. The model you choose answers your next message. See Models, privacy and usage for what the marks beside each name mean.

Attaching files

Press + and choose Add files, or drop files onto the chat.

Up to 5 files a message, each up to 10 MB.
Pictures (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP), PDFs and text files. Only a model that takes pictures can look at one: today that is Claude Haiku 5.5.
An attached file is kept in your drive, in the folder chat-attachments.

Files the assistant makes

When the assistant saves a file to your drive, it shows a card for it under its answer. Press the card to open the file beside the chat, with Download and Open in Drive. A file it saves goes to the top of your drive unless you name a folder.

When it asks first

Before the assistant does something that sends, invites or deletes for good, it stops and shows a card that says Needs your approval, with what it would do. Press Approve or Deny. When several actions wait at once, they are on one card, with Approve all and Deny all.

It always asks before it sends mail, moves mail to the Trash, makes, changes or deletes an event, answers an invitation, deletes a contact, or deletes mail or files for good. It does not ask before it reads, searches, saves a draft, makes a folder, or moves a file to the Trash of your drive, where it stays for 30 days.

Changing an answer

Under each answer are Copy and Retry. Under your own message are Retry and Edit, which lets you change what you wrote. Retry and Edit keep the old version: move between versions with the arrows beside them. What an earlier version sent, saved or changed stays done.

Keeping your chats

Your newest chats are in the sidebar. View all opens every chat, with Active and Archived and a search box. Each chat's menu has:

Item	What it does
Pin	Keeps the chat at the top.
Rename	Gives it another name.
Archive	Moves it out of the list. Bring back returns it.
Delete	Deletes the chat for good. The files its messages attached go to the Trash of your drive.

In a long chat the assistant may summarise the oldest messages to make room. The chat still shows everything, and a quiet line says where the summary took over.

The assistant can also search your past chats when you ask it about something you discussed before.