You can now interact with the Gemini side panel while viewing PDFs. This new viewing experience works with all kinds of PDFs, such as: 

• Scanned PDFs: Pictures of paper documents turned into PDFs. 
• Native PDFs: PDFs created on a computer, not from a scan.
• Text-heavy PDFs: Long PDFs with lots of writing. 
• Table-heavy PDFs: PDFs with complicated tables. 

With this update, you can use Gemini in Drive to help you with PDF files in the following ways: 

Many users follow threads within spaces in Google Chat to ensure they don’t miss any updates. To build upon this experience and help you keep track of important discussions occurring in threads, we’re introducing the ability to follow and review threads within the home shortcut. 

Threads you’ve chosen to follow will now appear directly within home, enabling you to quickly catch up. Rather than searching for the space and finding the thread, clicking on the thread via home takes you directly to the threaded conversation. You can also use the “Threads” button in home to filter your view to show threads only. This option is next to the “Unread” toggle, which filters your unread messages across DMs, spaces, and threads. You have the ability to filter for unread threads specifically when this is toggled on and the “Threads” button is selected. 

We’re introducing numerous improvements across the Gmail and Google Chat apps on Android foldables and tablets in order to enhance your productivity when using these devices. 

In the Gmail app, you’ll notice a new formatting bar located on the email compose screen. This now includes additional formatting options like the ability to change the font type and make a bulleted list.

Next, you’ll be able to view a list of helpful keyboard shortcuts in the Gmail app and in the Chat app by pressing “?” when you plug an external keyboard into your Android device. 

Lastly, we’re enabling Smart Compose on Android tablets and foldables, a feature originally introduced on Gmail web that intelligently autocompletes your emails. Similar to the mobile experience, Smart Compose suggests text as you type that can be accepted by swiping across the gray text or pressing tab on a physical keyboard. 

We’re expanding the availability of AI Classification in Google Drive to Google Workspace for Education customers with the Gemini Education Premium add-on. 

Even though data security is paramount in today’s digital world, organizations struggle to label their data at scale, rendering label-based data protections less useful. This problem is solved by AI classification, automatically applying labels to both new and existing files in Google Drive. 

Powered by privacy-preserving AI models that can be uniquely trained on specific customer needs, AI classification automatically identifies, classifies, and labels files in Google Drive.. This helps organizations standardize data classification and achieve labeling consistency at scale. Labels can then be used to trigger rules on files that can and cannot be shared through data loss prevention (DLP) controls, lifecycle management policies, as well as audit and reporting use cases. 

We’re introducing several changes to make labels more discoverable and flexible for organizations:

1. Label Manager’s New Location: The Label Manager interface is moving from a standalone UI into the Workspace Admin console. Prior to this change, Label admins had to navigate to https://drive.google.com/labels to manage labels in their organization. Going forward, admins can access the Label Manager tool by going to Security > Access and data control in the Admin console. 

2. Combined Label Types: Currently, there are two label types: Badged and Standard. Badged labels are single-field option lists with prominent visual display and coloring. Standard labels support complex metadata structures with up to ten fields of various formats. To make labels more adaptable, we’re combining these label types together, and going forward, every label will support up to 10 fields, one of which can be set as a “Badged list”. 

3. Label Ordinality: With the combination of label types, organizations will now be able to create many labels with badge fields. As a result, there will be scenarios in which multiple badges are applied to a single file. Some UI surfaces only support the display of a single badge, so to address this, admins will now be able to configure label ordinality in the Label Manager list view. The ranking of label ordinality will govern which label is prominently displayed when there are multiple badged labels on the same file. 

Today, we’re excited to announce that when you upload a video to Google Drive, captions for the video can be automatically generated. These captions are automatically generated using speech recognition technology to transcribe the audio. Automatically generated captions will be supported in English, with plans to expand to other languages in the future. 

We recently announced that our Learning Interoperability Tools, including Assignments LTI™, Google Drive LTI™, and Meet LTI™ will be consolidated under a new brand: Google Workspace LTI™.

In order to bring the collaborative power of Google Workspace for Education to even more partners, we’re excited to announce updated Google Workspace LTI™ integrations in Schoology, a K-12 learning management system that makes it easy to implement hybrid learning and integrate your favorite teaching and learning tools. 

To simplify this experience and enable users to operate on a newer, more secure and feature-rich version, Google Workspace LTI™ in PowerSchool Schoology Learning will now use the LTI 1.3. As a result, teachers and students have access to enhanced assignment capabilities and a secure classroom-centric Google Meet experience, directly in PowerSchool Schoology Learning: 

To help improve remote and hybrid learning, we’re introducing Google Meet LTI™ for Canvas by Instructure and PowerSchool Schoology Learning. This builds on the existing Google Workspace Learning Interoperability Tools including Assignments LTI™ and Google Drive LTI™.

Admins can create classification labels for users to apply to files in Google Drive. These classification labels are useful for many common workplace scenarios, including records management, classification, structured finding, reporting, auditing, and more. 

To improve granularity in enabling & governing labels, we are replacing and improving the existing “Labels” setting within Apps > Google Workspace > Drive & Docs and adding label-level application toggles to the Label Manager tool. 

Classification labels can be applied to a Workspace application once it's selected during the setup process. A lock icon will be displayed in line with the application toggle when the label is referenced by a policy, such as a DLP rule. To remove all rules that reference a specific label, go to the Data protection section of the Admin console > Security > Access and data control. 

The active labels in your Workspace domain will continue to function and will be auto-enabled for Drive & Doc as a result of this update.
  Getting started 

• Admins: To begin, turn on Drive labels for your organization. To create a label, go to the Label Manager at https://drive.google.com/labels > select “New Label” or edit an existing label by selecting it within Label Manager. Visit the Help Center to learn more about creating Drive labels for your organization. 
• Note: Labels can be viewed by any admin in your organization with the Manage Labels privilege. They could also be visible to everyone in your organization if the label's permissions are set that way. 
• End users: Visit this Help Center article to learn about how to apply labels that have been set up for your domain.

Rollout pace

• This feature is available now 

Availability 

Available for Google Workspace: 

• Business Standard, Plus 
• Enterprise Standard, Plus 
• Essentials Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Essentials Plus 
• Education Standard, Plus 
• Frontline Starter, Standard

Resources 

• Google Workspace Admin Help: Create Drive labels for your organization 
• Google Workspace Admin Help: Manage Labels privilege
• Google Help: Apply labels to files in Google Drive