Last updated: February 17th, 2025 at 12:20 UTC+01:00
In May 2024, Google updated Gemini with the ability to allow people to upload files. It could analyze them, provide insights about them, and let users ask questions about the files. However, the feature was available only for subscribers of Gemini Advanced, the paid tier of the GenAI assistant. Well, Google has now made it available for the free tier as well, allowing all Galaxy users to upload files and ask Gemini questions about them.
The Gemini app for Android now allows people who are using the GenAI assistant for free (the ones who don’t have the Gemini Advanced subscription) to upload files. They can upload files from their device or from Google Drive. Once uploaded, they can ask questions about the file to Gemini, such command it to summarise a document. You can check it out in the image below.
However, not everything is the same with the paid and the free tier when it comes to analyzing files. Unlike Gemini Advanced, which uses Gemini 2.0 Pro, Gemini uses Flash 2.0 to analyze documents. While the former offers better results, the latter also offers very useful results. If you are wondering which type of files it supports, below is a list of files Gemini will allow you to upload as stated by Google on its website.
- Plain text files: TXT
- Code files including C, CPP, PY, JAVA, PHP, SQL, and HTML
- Document files: DOC, DOCX, PDF, RTF, DOT, DOTX, HWP, HWPX
- Documents created in Google Docs
- Tabular data files: CSV, TSV
- Spreadsheet files: XLS, XLSX
- Spreadsheets created in Google Sheets
The feature is live on our Galaxy S23 in India. However, we couldn’t see it in Gemini on the web. We assume that Google will slowly make it available on other platforms.
