Gemini’s Gems go read-only on November 17 and disappear December 17. What to save

What changes on November 17 and December 17

Google is replacing Gems, the custom versions of Gemini people set up with their own instructions and files, with skills. Its help page on the change gives two dates for personal Google accounts if you’re 18 or over:

• November 17, 2026: “Gems transition to skills and become read only. You can still access your Gems, but can’t use or edit them, or create new ones.”
• December 17, 2026: “Gems are removed from Gemini Apps. You’ll no longer be able to access your Gems.”

Google said Gems would go “starting in November” when it launched skills in Gemini chat on September 30, and Notebookcheck saw November 17 in a notice above the Gems manager a day earlier. The December 17 removal, and the files that won’t make the move, are what gHacks reported on November 5, citing Google. Google hasn’t said what time of day either change happens.

Here is the schedule by account, as Google’s pages read on November 8:

Account	On November 17, 2026	Gems go away
Personal, 18 and over	Gems turn read-only and become skills	December 17, 2026
Personal, under 18	No change yet	“At a later date”
Workspace business, enterprise and nonprofit	Gems keep working	March 2027
Workspace education	Gems keep working	June 2027
Opal and Gems by Google Labs	Switched off, not converted	November 17, 2026

Google’s Workspace admin page gives the work and school dates as March 1 and June 1, 2027, and says “For now, users can continue creating and using Gems in the Gemini app.”

What becomes a skill, and what doesn’t

“When we remove Gems, we’ll automatically recreate your Gems as skills,” Google says, “along with any supported files.” For work accounts, its admin page adds that converted skills keep “their original names, descriptions, custom instructions, and uploaded knowledge files,” and arrive as “inactive drafts” their creators “must review and activate.” The page for personal accounts doesn’t say whether your converted skills arrive switched on.

Files are where Gems lose things. The help page sets two rules:

• “Skills have a 100 MB total size limit for files. If your Gem is larger than this when we transition it to a skill, we automatically remove the largest files first until it’s under the limit.”
• Some types aren’t carried over at all: GitHub files, audio, video, the old Office formats .doc, .xls and .ppt, and archives such as .zip, .rar and .7z.

Skills also work differently from Gems, and some of what Gems did isn’t there yet:

	Gems	Skills, on November 8
How you start one	Open it from Gems in the sidebar	Type / (soon @) in any chat, or let Gemini apply it
Works with Keep Activity off	Yes	No
Share with other people	Yes	Not yet, “in the coming weeks”
Canvas, Deep Research, Guided Learning, video and music	Yes	Not yet
Files	Includes types skills don’t take	Up to 100 MB in all
Past chats	A list of recent chats for each Gem	No list; they sit in the side panel

Skills add things too: Gemini can apply one on its own when it fits, you can combine several in one chat, and you can make as many as you like, “but only 100 can be active at a time.” They can’t include scripts that need the internet.

Who can use skills

Google’s skills page lists three requirements: be 18 or over, sign in to the Gemini app, and have Keep Activity on. Skills work at gemini.google.com, in the Gemini app on Mac and in the mobile app, though making one by uploading files works only on the web and on the Mac. Google lists no paid plan among them: its launch post says skills are “available to all Google AI subscription tiers,” and the Customize page they live on rolled out “for all user tiers” on October 13.

Keep Activity is the catch. Gems work with it off; Google’s activity page says “If Keep Activity is off, any Gems you create will still be saved to your account.” Skills don’t. With Keep Activity on, which is the default from 18, Google can train on your Gemini chats and have people review some of them, as our memo on Gemini training explains. If you turned it off on purpose, November 17 makes you choose between that setting and your Gems.

What to do before November 17

1. Find Skills. At gemini.google.com, select Customize in the sidebar (under More if it isn’t shown), then Skills. If it isn’t there, check that you’re signed in and that Keep Activity is on.
2. Save every Gem’s instructions. Open Gems, select Edit beside each one, and copy its instructions into a document of your own. Nothing that happens to the conversion can take that copy away.
3. Download its knowledge files. In the same view, open each file under Knowledge and select Download. Start with audio, video, archives, .doc, .xls, .ppt and GitHub files, and with any Gem over 100 MB.
4. Rebuild the Gems you rely on. On the Skills page, select Create, then Create manually, and paste in the name, description and instructions. To add files, put them in a folder named like the skill, in lowercase with hyphens; download the skill, move its SKILL.md into that folder, and upload the folder with Replace skill. Try it in a new chat by typing / and its name.
5. Let Google convert the rest. Gems you use now and then can wait for the automatic move. Check the skills they become between November 17 and December 17, while you can still open the originals.
6. Copy your Opal prompts. See the next section.

Opal and Gems by Google Labs

Opal, Google Labs’ experiment for building AI mini-apps, which also shows up in Gemini as “Gems made by Labs,” doesn’t become skills. Google’s Opal FAQ says both “will turn off on November 17, 2026,” and “Existing Opal workflows will not automatically migrate.” Your workflow files stay in My Drive > Opal, and Google “will not delete or touch these files,” but workflows “will no longer run interactively” after November 17.

Before then, open each workflow at opal.google.com and copy the prompts you want. Afterward, the prompt text is still there: download the files from the Opal folder and open them in a text editor. Google points people to skills for everyday prompts and to Google AI Studio for deeper prototyping.

What Google hasn’t said

• Whether converted skills arrive switched on for personal accounts, or as drafts to activate, as on work accounts.
• What happens to a converted skill on an account with Keep Activity off.
• When Gems end for people under 18, beyond “a later date.”
• What happens to Gems other people shared with you. Skills can’t be shared yet; Google says that comes “in the coming weeks.”
• Whether skills can take files from Google Drive yet. The transition page says that’s coming “in the coming weeks,” while the skills page already lists Google Drive, Google Photos and Notebooks as places to add files from.
• What time of day on November 17 and December 17 the changes take effect.

Taking your skills to other assistants

One thing skills add is that they leave with you. Google’s admin page says skills use “the open, Markdown-based SKILL.md format,” which “lets users create, customize, and transfer instructions across tools without platform lock-in.” On the Skills page, More options, then Download, saves a skill as a .zip with its SKILL.md file.

• Claude: on the Free, Pro, Max and Ultra plans, “You can enable example skills and upload your own” under Customize, then Skills, Anthropic says.
• ChatGPT: skills are for “eligible ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, Healthcare, and Edu users,” says OpenAI. Plus and Pro aren’t on that list.
• Claude Code and Codex: both read SKILL.md folders, Claude Code from .claude/skills and Codex from .agents/skills, in a project or in your home folder. Codex needs the file to include a name and a description.

Enjoy runs Claude Code and Codex on the plans you already have, and typing / in a message picks one of their skills, including one you’ve brought over from Gemini (how). Enjoy doesn’t run the Gemini app, though, and a skill that leaned on Gemini’s own Connected Apps, such as Gmail, gets only what the other agent can reach.

We’ll update this memo if Google changes its dates or says more before November 17.