Gemini could soon get several useful UI upgrades

Gemini been getting more capable by the day, and Google looks ready to make the app’s UI catch up. The tech giant has been working on some major UI changes for Gemini, and those changes are now finally starting to take shape.

We’ve spotted the company working on a dedicated home for notifications, updated chat organization, filters for searching through recent chats, and a way to finally hide Gemini’s status bar icon.

None of the changes are live just yet. We were able to get a sneak peek at what Google is cooking after taking a look into Google app version 17.52.12.sa.arm64. Taken alone, they offer a scattered look at what might be coming to Gemini. Together, they paint a clearer picture that shows that Google wants Gemini to be easier to use and navigate.

For starters, the Gemini sidebar could be getting a few practical changes. Currently, important conversations that you’ve pinned appear right within the Recents section. With what we’ve found, it looks like Gemini wants pinned chats to break out into their own dedicated section above Recents. The change should make it easier to spot important conversations that you might need to come back to often.

The change, however, might come with a trade-off. Currently, searching for a chat involves heading to the sidebar, tapping “Search chats,” and typing in the relevant keywords. With what Google is testing, the search option could be moved to the sidebar’s header, making it harder to reach when using your phone one-handed.

As seen in the screenshot above, the search magnifying glass icon also shows a new bell icon next to it. This is a new section that Google is experimenting with. During our testing, the section always showed up empty. However, it could eventually highlight all Gemini notifications, including ones for completed tasks, Gemini Briefs, and other similar activity. For what it’s worth, these tasks already trigger a Gemini notification, though once you dismiss it, there’s no obvious way to get back in and find it within Gemini. A dedicated Notifications section could change that.

For situations where you want to look for a chat but don’t remember any relevant keywords to search for, Gemini might soon let you narrow things down.

We’ve spotted Google also working on giving the Recents section its own set of filters. Instead of relying on search, you’ll be able to sort conversations based on their status. The filters we’ve spotted include Unread, Ready, Needs attention, and In progress, with the latter two likely reserved for Gemini Spark tasks.

Speaking of Spark, Google also appears to be preparing a dedicated Customize section for the 24/7 autonomous AI agent.

Likely to appear within the sidebar, the new Customize option would let users discover skills and apps for Gemini Spark. Once tapped, the Customize page appears to open on a Discover tab that highlights apps and skills based on categories like For you, Productivity, Creativity, and more. A dropdown on the page will let users browse Skills and Apps separately. The former will let users view and manage skills they’ve added to Spark. The latter will highlight all apps connected to Spark, complete with the option to add new apps, remove ones already connected, and manage whether those apps can be used in chats.

The final change that we spotted isn’t huge, but it sure could be useful for those that prefer a clutter-free status bar.

Currently, during specific scenarios, like when Gemini is running in the background, its four-point star icon can show up in the status bar. Google may soon give users a way to prevent the appearance of the icon, as it’s working on a setting that will let you turn on or off the status bar icon.

Instead of offering a dedicated toggle right within the app, Gemini will likely leverage Android’s notification settings to give users explicit control over whether the icon appears or not. This ties into Google’s broader work on giving users more status bar control, as we previously spotted in Android Canary 2607.

As always, there’s no telling if and when these upgrades will roll out. Google might scrap some of these features, or they might look a lot different if they ever make it out to the public.