Gmail Release Notes

What’s changing

In 2025, we introduced the ability to react to emails in Gmail with emojis. This feature lets users respond quickly to acknowledge receipt of an email in a fun, informal and more authentic way. While initially enabled as an opt-in feature for early customer access, starting February 9, 2026, emoji reactions in Gmail will be enabled by default.

Organizations wishing to disable this feature can do so at any time in the Admin console, and the feature will not be enabled by default for organizations who have previously disabled or modified this feature setting in the Admin console (check the Audit & Investigation tool to confirm).

Whether you’re using a ‘thanks’ emoji to express gratitude, voting for a team dinner with a food emoji, or congratulating your client for reaching a milestone with a celebratory emoji, emoji reactions provide an expressive and more personal way to respond to emails.

Note that reactions cannot be sent in certain scenarios, for example if an email was received via a Google Group email alias or if there is a Google Group on the recipient list. Visit the Help Center to learn more about these scenarios.

Getting started

• Admins: If you do not wish to have emoji reactions on by default, visit the Admin console (Apps > Gmail > End User Access > Emoji reactions) before February 9, 2026, and ensure the setting is unchecked before clicking “Save.” Even if the setting is already unchecked, we suggest clicking “Save” to ensure it does not default to enabled on February 9. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing Gmail settings for your users.
• End users: Emoji reactions are best experienced via the Gmail app on Android and iOS and via Gmail.com on the web. Visit the Help Center to learn more about replying to emails with emoji reactions and why you may get emoji reactions as an email.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Admin console setting available now. Unless changed per the instructions above, it will be default enabled on February 9, 2026.

Availability

• Available to all Google Workspace customers.

Resources

• Google Workspace Admin Help: Manage Gmail settings for your users
• Google Help: Reply to emails with emoji reactions

Earlier this year, data classification labels for Gmail became generally available. Admins can use this feature to classify and audit email content according to organizational guidelines (“Sensitive,” “Confidential,” etc.) and apply policies, such as data loss prevention (DLP) rules, to protect sensitive information in email messages.

We have expanded this functionality to include the ability to create a DLP rule that adds a header or footer message to email messages. Critically, header and footer messages will be shown to users outside of your domain, which helps ensure external users are aware of the sensitivity of the message and any handling requirements. DLP rules are applied to outbound messages from your domain based on how you have configured the rule scope and conditions. As a reminder, the actual classification label is only visible to recipients in your domain.

Admins can customize the information shown in the header or footer message, including links to further information on handling information. Headers and footers are visible on all device types, both within and outside of your domain.

Selecting “Add footer message” when creating a rule

Once the email is sent, the banner will appear in the body of the email.

For more information on data classification labels for Gmail, please refer to our previous announcement.

Getting started

• Admins: Visit the Help Center to learn more about getting started with classification labels, Gmail DLP & automatic classification labels, and preventing data leaks in email and attachments.
• End users: No action is required. Footers will automatically be applied to your messages depending on your admin configuration.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Available now

Availability

Data loss prevention rules with labels as a condition or labels as an action are available to:

• Enterprise Standard and Plus
• Education Fundamentals, Standard, Plus, and the Teaching & Learning Upgrade
• Frontline Standard and Plus
• Cloud Identity Premium (with Workspace plan that includes Gmail)

Resources

• Google Workspace Admin Help: Gmail DLP & automatic classification labels
• Google Workspace Admin Help: About DLP
• Google Workspace Admin Help: Prevent data leaks in email & attachments
• Google Workspace Admin Help: Get started as a classification labels admin
• Google Help: Add classification labels in Gmail

Overview

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.

Starting from a Gmail thread, you can initiate a chat with the existing email recipients, a subset, or a new group. The email is automatically forwarded and recipients can open it directly from a link in Chat.

This enables you to switch to Chat for active discussion while preserving the connection to the original message. Two-way linking helps ensure that everyone has the full context they need for a productive discussion and reduces the need to jump between tabs.

This feature is helpful in common scenarios such as:

• Resolving an issue in real time instead of going back and forth over email
• Chatting about an email with a subset of the original group before responding
• Discussing a customer email with coworkers
• Signal boosting an announcement by company leadership
• Sharing meetings notes and action items

Getting started

• Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. Organizations must have both Gmail and Chat enabled for the feature to appear.
• End users: This feature will be on by default for users who have Chat enabled in Gmail, available on desktop at launch and on mobile soon (currently available in limited testing on mobile for selected users). Visit the Help Center to learn more about how to share in Chat from Gmail.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release domains: Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility) starting on December 2, 2025
• Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on December 9, 2025

Availability

Available for Google Workspace:

• Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Frontline Starter, Standard, Plus
• Nonprofits

We plan to bring this feature to Education customers in the coming months. Please stay tuned to the Workspace Updates blog for an update on availability.

Resources

• Google Help: Share in Chat from Gmail

Gmail is enhancing user security by enabling the Cross-Origin Opener Policy (COOP). As a result, developers of websites and browser extensions opening or manipulating the Gmail page may have to update their code to ensure continued functionality when enforcement begins on January 20, 2026. There is no action needed from Workspace admins or end users.

COOP background

Cross-Site Search (XS-Search) is a type of Cross-Site Leaks (XS-Leaks) attack that targets query-based search systems, like Gmail. Attackers exploit this vulnerability by gaining control of a Gmail window, either by opening a new popup or accessing an existing one via its window handle. Once they have this access, they can gather information via a side channel to determine if specific search results exist by repeatedly loading different search terms, thereby leaking sensitive user data.

COOP is a web security feature designed to isolate the web applications from untrusted origins. This measure will prevent attackers from accessing Gmail's window handle, thereby protecting users from various Cross-Site Search (XS-Search) attacks that rely on window handles for collecting side-channel information, such as frame counting. This also significantly hinders attacks like cache probing, which rely on timing and other observations for resources that Gmail loads for search results. While these attacks don't directly collect side-channel information through the window handles themselves, COOP prevents repeated searches and thereby increases difficulty and reduces effectiveness, making them far less of a threat.

Who’s impacted

Websites or browser extensions that open Gmail in a pop-up window and interact with that window by accessing its properties (closed, location, length, focus) or invoking its functions (close, postMessage). Also, browser extensions that are injected into Gmail page and access the opener handle which is a reference to the window that opened the current Gmail page.

Additional details

To enforce COOP, the Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy header will be present in the response:

Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy: same-origin-allow-popups; report-to="gmail-web-coop-coep"
Report-To:{"group":"gmail-web-coop-coep","endpoints":[{"url":"https://csp.withgoogle.com/csp/report-to/gmail-web"}]}

Getting started

• Developers:
◦ For websites and browser extensions opening Gmail, refactor the offending code to avoid accessing the window properties or functions through the window handle and instead, utilize alternative APIs to achieve the desired functionality (e.g., chrome.tabs, Messaging).
◦ For browser extensions injected into the Gmail page, instead of trying to communicate with or access the opener, the browser extension should be updated so it doesn't need to interact with it at all and the extension's logic should be revised to work independently. If that is not possible, browser extensions can use existing APIs (e.g., chrome.tabs) to implement their logic.
• Admins:
There is no admin control for this feature.
• End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

Rollout pace

• Enforcement will begin on January 20, 2026. Rollout will be extended (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility).

Resources

• Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy: preventing attacks from popups
• Making your website "cross-origin isolated" using COOP and COEP
• COOP and COEP explained
• Why you need "cross-origin isolated" for powerful features
• A guide to enable cross-origin isolation

What’s changing

Finding time to meet — especially with external clients and customers — is hard, often requiring many back-and-forth emails. The new Gemini-powered Help me schedule feature in Gmail makes it easier for you to coordinate time with others.

Gmail with Gemini will detect when you’re trying to coordinate a time within an email and will surface a Help me schedule button in the toolbar. After you click on the Help me schedule button, Gemini will automatically suggest ideal slots based on your Google Calendar and the email's context. For example, if someone asks for a 30 minute meeting next week, Gemini will recommend time slots that fit your availability.

You can customize the times that Gemini suggests by removing or adding additional options, and then insert them directly into your Gmail message. Once the recipient receives the email and selects a time that works for them, a Calendar invite will automatically be added to both individual’s calendars. At launch, this feature will only support scheduling between two individuals, not groups.

Getting started

• Admins: This feature will be on by default for eligible users. Use our Help Center to learn how to manage access to Gemini features in Workspace services.
• End users: This feature will be on by default for eligible users. Visit the Help Center to learn more about scheduling events in Gmail.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on October 13. 2025
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days days for feature visibility) starting approximately October 28, 2025

Availability

• Available for Google Workspace:

  • Business Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Google AI Pro for Education
  • Frontline Plus

• Also available to:

  • Google AI Pro and Ultra
  • Gemini Business, Enterprise*

*As of January 15, 2025, we’re no longer offering the Gemini Business and Gemini Enterprise add-ons for sale. Please refer to this announcement for more details.

Resources

• Google Help: Schedule events in Gmail

Securely viewing an E2EE email in a restricted version of Gmail

Users sending an email will see a notification when composing their message

Getting started

• Admins: This feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled at the OU and Group level. Visit the Help Center to learn more about turning Gmail E2EE on or off for your organization. Visit the Help Center for a Client-side encryption setup overview.
• End users: This feature will be on by default for users that have access to Gmail Client-side encryption. Visit the Help Center to learn more about Gmail Client-side encryption.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on Sep 30, 2025

Availability

Available for Google Workspace:

• Enterprise Plus with the Assured Controls add-on.

Resources

• Google Help: Learn about Gmail Client-side encryption
• Google Workspace Admin Help: About client-side encryption
• Google Workspace Admin Help: About Assured Controls and Assured Controls Plus
• Google Workspace Blog: New in Gmail: Making end-to-end encrypted emails easy to use for all organizations

We're making it quicker and easier to manage your emails on mobile with two new features:

• You can now use the "Mark as Read" feature directly on your Android device to clear a notification.
• Sender avatars are now available on iOS devices, providing you with a quick glance at the sender's picture to help you spot important senders and prioritize what to read first.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Available now

Availability

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

What’s changing

Earlier this year, we introduced the ability to add an event to your calendar directly from an email using Gemini in Gmail on web. Today, we’re excited to announce this is now available on Android and iOS devices.

With this update, Gemini will automatically detect calendar related content in your email and an “Add to calendar” button will appear. Upon clicking this option, the bottom panel in Gmail will open to confirm the event has been added to your calendar.

Additional details

If Gemini detects content about multiple events in an email, Gemini will offer to add all of them to your Google Calendar.

Getting started

• Admins:
  • To access Gemini in the side panel of Workspace apps, users need to have smart features and personalization turned on. Admins can turn on default personalization setting for their users in the Admin console.
• End users:
  • This feature is only available for emails in English at this time.
  • The "Add to calendar" button will not appear for emails with already extracted events (like restaurants, flights, etc.).
  • A calendar event created via the “Add to calendar” button will not include other guests, they must be added afterwards.
  • Visit the Help Center to learn more about collaborating with Gemini in Gmail.

Rollout pace

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on Aug 13, 2025

Availability

Available for Google Workspace:

• Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
• Frontline Plus
• Customers with the Gemini Education or Gemini Education Premium add-on
• Google AI Pro and Ultra
  Anyone who previously purchased these add-ons will also receive this feature:
• Gemini Business*
• Gemini Enterprise*
  *As of January 15, 2025, we’re no longer offering the Gemini Business and Gemini Enterprise add-ons for sale. Please refer to this announcement for more details.

Resources

• Google Help: Collaborate with Gemini in Gmail

Getting started

Developers: Visit the developer documentation to learn how Google Workspace add-ons work in Chat and other information to get started.

• Apps Script developers can quickly build a Chat app as a Workspace Add-on using the Quickstart Guide, or using the Apps Script Chat app template.
• Apps Script developers can also refer to this Youtube tutorial published by our Workspace Developer Relations team: Build a Chat app as a Google Workspace add-on with Apps Script. This details how to build a Chat app as a Google Workspace add-on with Apps Script and extend it to other Workspace applications (Calendar, Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides). Source code links are available in the description as well.
• Developers that would like to build a Chat app as a Workspace Add-on using HTTP services can follow this Quickstart Guide.
• Our Google Workspace Developers YouTube channel has also published a video showing how a Chat app can configure Calendar events, and Gmail vacation responder settings: Build a Chat app as a Google Workspace add-on with Apps Script.

Admins:

• Admins can choose to admin-install Chat apps for their users, so that the Chat app will automatically be available for end users.
• If admins allow users to install Chat apps from the Workspace Marketplace, end users can browse the Marketplace to discover and find Chat apps to install.
• Visit the Help Center to learn more about Getting started as a Marketplace app admin.

End users:

• Install Chat apps from the Workspace Marketplace.
• Visit the Help Center to learn more about Using apps in Google Chat.

Rollout pace

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Available now.

Availability

• Chat apps are available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts
• Developing Chat apps is available to all Google Workspace customers

Resources

• Google Workspace Admin Help: Install Marketplace apps for your organization
• Google Workspace Admin Help: Allow users to install Chat apps
• Google Workspace Marketplace: Lucid for Google Chat
• Youtube: Build a Chat app as a Google Workspace add-on with Apps Script

Additional notes

• Previously available as part of the Google Workspace Developer Preview Program, we're excited to announce that the ability for developers to build Google Chat apps using the Workspace add-on framework is now generally available.
• The Workspace add-ons framework makes it possible to build and maintain one app that works across multiple Workspace apps including Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Chat. This reduces complexity and improves the experience for developers, system admins, and end-users.
• In Chat, Workspace add-ons can provide helpful features, such as:
  • Previewing links from Chat messages and taking action without leaving the conversation.
  • Automating tasks across Google Workspace applications.
  • Receiving alerts or notifications from linked external services.
  • Combining external data from 3rd party apps and services with your data from Gmail, Chat, and Calendar.
• Lucid, developers of Lucidchart, Lucidspark, and Lucidscale, recently updated their existing Workspace Add-ons to now support Chat. These integrations with Google Chat enable link previews, quick search, and access management all within Chat.
• See more details on the Lucidchart, Lucidspark, and Lucidscale integrations here.
• Soon, other partners, including Asana, Confluence, Figma, HubSpot, Miro, Polly, ServiceNow, Trello, 1Password, and more will be releasing Chat apps built on the Workspace add-ons framework.

Release notes

Last year, we introduced web and mobile updates that enable you to
unsubscribe from individual emails in Gmail
more easily. Today, we’re building upon this with Gmail's new "Manage subscriptions" feature.

With the “Manage subscriptions” view, you can organize your subscription emails and easily unsubscribe from the ones you no longer want – all from a single place.

To find this view, click the navigation bar in the top-left corner of your inbox and select “Manage subscriptions.” Your active subscriptions are sorted by the most frequent senders alongside the number of emails they’ve sent you in the past few weeks. If there’s a sender you no longer wish to receive emails from, you can easily unsubscribe in one click, and Gmail will send an unsubscribe request to the sender on your behalf.

Additional details

If you are a bulk sender wanting to know more about unsubscribe requirements, please see additional details here.

Getting started

• Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
• End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing your subscriptions in Gmail, unsubscribing from an email, and blocking or unblocking an email address.

Rollout pace

Web:

• Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 8, 2025
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 28, 2025

Android:

• Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 14, 2025
• Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on 31, 2025

iOS:

• Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on July 21, 2025

Availability

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

Resources

• Google Help: Block or unsubscribe from emails
• Google Help: Manage your subscriptions in Gmail
• Google Help: Unsubscribe from an email
• Google Help: Block or unblock an email address
• Keyword Blog: Declutter your inbox with Gmail’s newest feature