This official feed from the Google Workspace team provides essential information about new features and improvements for Google Workspace customers.
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A summary of announcements from the last week:

The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog over the last week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.

Control whether users can request to join a space in Google Chat

New Google Chat Access Control Space owners and managers can now disable the "request to join" feature. Previously, users with a link to a restricted space could ask for permission to enter; with this new setting, managers can block these requests entirely, preventing users from asking to join via a link. | Learn more about controlling whether users can request to join a space in Google Chat.

Educators can now assign public notebooks in Google Classroom

Expanded NotebookLM Assignments in Google Classroom Educators can now attach public notebooks to assignments, rather than being limited to notebooks they personally create or own. This update allows teachers to easily integrate external shared resources—such as content from the OpenStax partnership—directly into their curriculum. | Learn more about assigning public notebooks in Google Classroom.

New to Gmail: share emails in Google Chat

We’re launching a new integration between Gmail and Google Chat designed to improve team collaboration and productivity. With this feature, you can easily share a conversation from your Gmail inbox to a Chat direct message or space. No need to start your chat conversation with, "Did you see the email I forwarded?" or dig through your inbox to find the message being discussed. | Learn more about sharing emails to Google Chat directly from Gmail.

Choose your preferred caption language for Meet live streams on mobile devices

Google Meet live stream viewers can select their own preferred language for translated captions on mobile devices. Individual language selection helps overcome language barriers during presentations and events, maximizing each viewer's potential to understand and engage with the content being shared. | Learn more about choosing your preferred caption language for Meet live streams on mobile devices.

Google Meet translated captions now available in Cantonese

Cantonese Support for Google Meet Translated Captions Google Meet has added Cantonese to its list of supported languages for translated captions. This allows real-time translation of Cantonese speech into other languages, significantly improving accessibility and collaboration for global teams and educational institutions operating in diverse linguistic environments. | Learn more about Cantonese support for Google Meet translated captions.

A refreshed user interface for Google Meet hardware touch controllers

In the coming weeks, we’ll roll out a streamlined user interface for the following Meet Hardware devices: Mimo Vue HD, Mimo Mist, Logitech Tap, Logitech Tap IP, and Lenovo Series One Touch controllers (with Android devices coming soon). This new experience will offer users a more efficient and intuitive way to manage their meetings. | Learn more about a refreshed user interface for Google Meet hardware touch controllers.

Seamlessly join meetings on Google Meet hardware with “Connect room”

In the coming weeks, we’ll introduce Connect room, a new way to seamlessly begin your meetings on Google Meet hardware directly from your personal device. This will be available in early preview. Connect room streamlines how you start meetings in a conference room. Instead of manually typing a meeting code, this feature uses ultrasound proximity detection to identify a nearby, available Google Meet hardware device. | Learn more about seamlessly joining meetings on Google Meet hardware with “Connect room”.

Get quick insights on your Google Drive folders with Gemini

Earlier this year, we introduced Gemini “nudges” at the top of folders in Google Drive, and we’re now making it even easier to get the context of your folders at a glance. Gemini will now proactively provide insights about the files within a folder, right at the top of the folder view. This makes it easier to quickly understand what’s inside without having to open individual files. | Learn more about getting quick insights on your Google Drive folders with Gemini.

Now available: Create AI agents to automate work with Google Workspace Studio

Today we’re introducing Google Workspace Studio: the place to create, manage, and share AI agents to automate work in Workspace—no coding required. | Learn more about creating AI agents to automate work with Google Workspace Studio.

A more modern interface for viewing PDFs, videos, images, and audio files in Google Drive on the web

Google Drive is making significant improvements to the viewing experience of third party file formats, such as PDFs, videos, images, and audio files. | Learn more about a more modern interface for viewing PDFs, videos, images, and audio files in Google Drive on the web.

BYOD on Google Meet on Chrome OS touch controller rooms

We're launching an integration with Lightware peripheral switchers, so that you and your team can bring your own devices (BYOD) to Google Meet on Chrome OS touch controller rooms. Now, you can plug your laptop into a Meet room with a single USB-C cable and easily use the room's display, speaker, microphone, and camera—along with your laptop—for video conferencing. | Learn more about BYOD on Google Meet for ChromeOS touch controller rooms.

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What’s changing

We're launching an integration with Lightware peripheral switchers, so that you and your team can bring your own devices (BYOD) to Google Meet on Chrome OS touch controller rooms. Now, you can plug your laptop into a Meet room with a single USB-C cable and easily use the room's display, speaker, microphone, and camera—along with your laptop—for video conferencing. The integration is available with the following peripheral switcher devices:

  • Lightware Taurus UCX 4x2 HC40
  • Lightware Taurus UCX 4x3 HC40

Additional details

This offers the following benefits:

  • Seamless transition: Rooms will automatically enter BYOD mode as soon as a user connects their laptop via a certified cable, enabling immediate use of the room's display and high-quality audio and video equipment.
  • Meeting continuity: If a Google Meet call is already in progress, connecting a laptop will not interrupt the call or activate BYOD mode. The same cable for BYOD mode can be used during a Google Meet meeting for sharing your screen to the meeting, ensuring a unified meeting experience.
  • Enhanced admin control: Administrators will gain new visibility within the Google admin console, allowing them to see when BYOD mode is active in a room and preventing erroneous missing peripheral alerts when a third-party device is in control.

Getting started

  • Admins: Visit the Lightware website for more information.
  • End users: Once the integration is installed, use a USB-C cable to use the room displays, audio devices, and camera.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Meet on Chrome OS devices

Resources

Read More

What’s changing

Google Drive is making significant improvements to the viewing experience of third party file formats, such as PDFs, videos, images, and audio files. With this launch, we are modernizing the interface to include:

  • A new left rail for PDFs which will include a table of contents (where applicable) and thumbnails for easier navigation of documents
  • A new file menu
  • A new toolbar and app bar
  • An option to search by transcript when looking at a video

This modernization will make it easier for Google Workspace users to navigate documents, and will be particularly useful for large documents. 


New Drive Web Viewing Experience for PDFs

New Drive Web Viewing Experience for PDFs

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature will be on by default. There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature will be on by default. You will see it when you open a supported file format in a new tab in Google Drive on the web. Use our Help Center to learn more about how to use Google Drive. 

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts

Resources

Read More

What’s happening

Today we’re introducing Google Workspace Studio: the place to create, manage, and share AI agents to automate work in Workspace—no coding required. 


What you can do with Workspace Studio

Workspace agents built in Studio offer flexibility and intelligence beyond traditional automation.

  • Automate with agents: Move beyond simple, rule-based automation. Agents can reason through problems and adapt to new information, tackling complex workflows such as intelligent prioritization, support issue triage, smart approvals, content generation, and sentiment analysis.
  • Create agents with AI: Empower every user to build custom agents in minutes. End users can simply describe what they want to automate in plain language (e.g., "every Friday, ping me to update my tracker"), and Gemini will create it.
  • Work smarter with context: Agents can now help with tasks such as “Draft a weekly update for Project Cymbal”, or “What should I do today?”. They are deeply integrated with your Workspace apps (like Gmail, Drive, and Sheets). This allows agents to automatically pull relevant context from your documents, emails, and the web, enabling them to provide smarter, personalized answers and take actions based on your specific situation.
  • Integrate seamlessly: Automate across your entire toolset. Agents can be connected to third-party apps and platforms including Asana, Jira, Mailchimp, and Salesforce.
  • Extend capabilities: Create more powerful and personalized agents for your business or education institution:
    • Call external APIs with webhooks to connect to virtually any internal or external service (e.g., push notifications to Slack/Teams/Discord).
    • Build custom steps using Apps Script to integrate with proprietary internal tools, ADK agents, or models via Vertex AI.
  • Share and scale: Agents can be shared with a team for others to copy, similar to sharing a Google Doc. This makes it easy to scale powerful agents across your organization.
  • Use templates: Users can create agents with a library of zero-configuration templates for common use cases that can be shared across your organization. For example:
    • Get a daily summary of unread emails
    • Label emails with action items
    • Get pre-meeting briefs in chat

Additional details

Workspace customers on all eligible editions will get promotional access to higher usage limits of Workspace Studio, allowing users to further experiment with these features. Please note that usage may be subject to change to ensure a consistent and high-quality experience for all users. Additional details on per-user usage limits will be provided in a future update in January 2026.

Users under the age of 18 will not be able to create agents with Gemini AI or use AI-powered steps in agents.

Getting started

  • Admins: Google Workspace Studio is a core service and will be on or off by default based on your organization’s release preference for new products. It can be enabled or disabled at the OU and group level. Additionally, in the coming weeks, Workspace Studio will be rolling out several new features, including enhancements for external sharing, email sending beyond your primary domain, and robust webhook support. These features will be tightly integrated with your existing trusted domains and allow list configurations, ensuring that admins will have the ability to control, monitor, and audit data flow to meet their organization's specific security and compliance standards. Granular admin controls will also be available to manage these features. More info on default settings for sharing, webhooks, and Gemini features can be found in the Admin Help center.
  • End users: Once available, end users can access this feature by visiting https://studio.workspace.google.com/.

Rollout pace

  • Rapid Release domains: Admins will see settings appear in the Admin console at the same time their end users get access to Workspace Studio; this rollout will be gradual starting December 3, 2025.
  • Scheduled Release domains: Admin console settings will roll out gradually starting December 3, 2025; end user access to Workspace Studio will roll out gradually starting January 5, 2026.

Availability

Available for Google Workspace:

  • Business Starter,  Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Education Fundamentals, Standard, and Plus
Also available to:

  • Google AI Pro for Education
  • Google AI Ultra for Business

Resources

Read More

What’s happening

Earlier this year, we introduced Gemini “nudges” at the top of folders in Google Drive, and we’re now making it even easier to get the context of your folders at a glance. Gemini will now proactively provide insights about the files within a folder, right at the top of the folder view. This makes it easier to quickly understand what’s inside without having to open individual files. For a more in-depth look, you can click “Explore with Gemini” to get a full summary or ask follow up questions in the Gemini side panel. 

Get quick insights on your Google Drive folders with Gemini

This feature is designed to help you save time and stay organized by providing at-a-glance insights into your folders. It is an evolution of the previous version of folder nudges, moving from simple suggestions to proactive, intelligent insights. This feature is currently available in English only.

Getting started

  • Admins: To enable this feature for your users, you can turn on the default personalization setting for smart features in the Admin console.
  • End users: This feature will be ON by default for end users who have smart features and personalization turned on in their Google Workspace apps. To disable, you can “collapse” the “insights by Gemini” section of a folder. You can also disable this feature by turning off smart features entirely. 

Rollout pace

Availability

Available for Google Workspace:

  • Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus

Also available to:

  • Google One AI Premium
  • Google AI Pro for Education
Read More

Useful Links

Join the official community for Google Workspace administrators

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Learn about more Google Workspace launches

On the “What’s new in Google Workspace?” Help Center page, learn about new products and features launching in Google Workspace, including smaller changes that haven’t been announced on the Google Workspace Updates blog.

Learn about our customers

Discover how a diverse range of organizations, from small businesses and nimble startups to globally recognized Fortune 500 corporations, leverage the collaborative power of Google Workspace. Explore examples of how teams of are streamlining workflows and driving productivity by utilizing Google-Workspace.