Are Gemini Gems going away? How to move your Gem to a skill

Yes. Google is replacing Gems with skills: reusable custom instructions you can call in any Gemini chat. If you built a Gem to hold your instructions or background, here's when it stops working, what Google moves over for you, what it leaves behind, and how to keep your context safe, based on Google's own help pages.

Dates differ by account type, and Google is still rolling skills out. Follow the notice in your own account, and treat menu names as signposts.

The key dates

For personal Google Accounts (18 and over), Google lists:

November 17, 2026: Gems transition to skills and become read-only. You can still see your Gems, but you can't use or edit them or create new ones.
December 17, 2026: Gems are removed from Gemini Apps, along with their files.

If you're under 18 on a personal account, Google says your Gems move later, with details to come. Work and school accounts get more time: Google lists March 2027 for Workspace business, enterprise and nonprofit accounts (no sooner than March 1, 2027), and June 2027 for education accounts (no sooner than June 1, 2027). Until then, Workspace users can keep creating and using Gems, which move to Settings on November 17, 2026.

What carries over automatically

Google says it will turn your Gems into skills for you when Gems go away, along with any supported files. For Workspace accounts, Google says converted skills keep their names, descriptions, custom instructions and knowledge files, and show up as inactive drafts that the creator has to review and activate.

Some knowledge files won't make the trip:

Size: skills have a 100 MB total limit for files. If a Gem is bigger, Google removes the largest files first until it fits.
File types left out: GitHub files, audio, video, older Microsoft Office formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt) and archives such as .zip or .rar.

On a personal account, download any file you want to keep before December 17, 2026. Google suggests opening your Gem and the new skill side by side to spot what didn't transfer.

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How skills work

A skill is a saved set of instructions, plus optional reference files, that Gemini can use in any chat. You don't switch into a separate window the way you do with a Gem:

Call it by name: type / (or @, if you have the updated shortcut) in a chat and pick the skill.
Automatic use: Gemini can apply an activated skill on its own when it fits your request. Deactivate a skill to stop that.
Stack them: you can use more than one skill in the same chat.

To use skills you need to be 18 or over, signed in, with Keep Activity turned on. They work on gemini.google.com, the Gemini mobile app and the Gemini app on Mac, and no Google AI subscription is required. For now, most of the default tools Gems had (Canvas, Deep Research, Guided Learning, creating video and music) don't work with skills.

Move a Gem yourself, now

You don't have to wait for the automatic switch. On gemini.google.com, click Customize in the sidebar (under More if you don't see it), then Skills at the top. From there you can:

Build a skill from a blank or prefilled template and paste in your Gem's instructions.
Upload a SKILL.md file, or a folder or .zip with a SKILL.md in its main folder. The skill name inside must be lowercase with hyphens, like my-context.
Or ask Gemini in a chat: "Create a skill based on these instructions:" followed by the text.

Reference files must be plain-text formats such as .txt, .md, .csv or .json, plus PDFs and images. Word and Excel files (.docx, .xlsx) aren't supported, so save those as PDF or text first. To change files later, you upload the whole skill again.

Keep your instructions somewhere you control

If your Gem mainly told Gemini who you are and how you like answers, copy its instructions into a document of your own before the switch. That's a personal context file: a short document about you that you write once and keep. It doesn't depend on Gems, skills or any one app. Put a short version in Instructions for Gemini, turn the full version into a skill, and reuse the same file in ChatGPT, Claude or Grok. In any new chat, you can also paste this line with your file underneath:

Here is my personal context file. Read it and use it for everything in this chat. You don't need to summarize it back to me. Just reply "Got it" and wait for my first request.

[paste your context file here]

Sources: Gemini Apps Help, About the transition from Gems to skills and Create & manage skills for Gemini Apps; Google Workspace Help, About the transition from Gems to skills.

Related guides

More guides on how AI assistants remember you:

Start free in 10 minutes. Grab the free Mini Context Card: a one-page fill-in sheet to write your first context file.
Get the free card Full Context Kit ($19 suggested) The full kit includes a fill-in template, a worked example, a step-by-step setup guide for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok, plus interview and monthly-refresh prompts.