In the week a new feature is announced, I try nearly all of it. Six months later, only a handful are still part of my week.
I noticed this while tidying the store descriptions for my apps. I open Docs as often as ever, yet I could hardly remember pressing a Gemini button.
So here is a half-year audit of the Gemini features announced on March 10, 2026 for Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drive.
What was announced
As reported at the time, the features arrived in beta, first for Google AI Ultra and Pro subscribers, starting in English. Drive's new capabilities appeared first in the United States.
| App | Announced | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Docs | Draft from your files and emails; "match writing style" and "match doc format" | First drafts of routine documents, tidying layout |
| Sheets | Build a sheet from a prompt; "Fill with Gemini" to summarize, categorize or pull web data into cells | Classification, list building |
| Slides | Generate slides from your material | First drafts of decks |
| Drive | Generate docs, slides and sheets from Gmail, Chat and Drive content | Pulling scattered information together |
That was the rollout as announced. Whether your account has each feature today is a separate question, so check your own screen before sorting.
One criterion: did my manual work shrink?
Judging each feature's quality never ends. I settled on a single test.
Did using it actually reduce the hands-on work I do?
If yes, keep it. If I can't tell, hold. If not, drop. Dropping only means taking it off my weekly menu; nothing is removed.
My sorting
This is a feel for six months, not a measurement.
| Feature | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Fill with Gemini in Sheets | Keep | Handing a column of classification or summary work over left only a short review |
| Match writing style in Docs | Hold | It works on some documents and not others; I'm still learning which |
| Slide generation | Drop | A draft appeared, but I rebuilt the structure myself anyway |
| Cross-Drive generation | Unchecked | It reached the US first, so I can't judge it yet |
Only "Fill with Gemini" made it into real work. I wrote up how I use it for multilingual store text in filling multilingual app store metadata with Sheets.
What the dropped feature taught me
I didn't drop slide generation because it was bad. The first draft really did arrive faster. But the heavy part of making a deck, for me as an indie developer, is deciding what to say, and that is not something I could hand over.
What the feature replaced was the light part of my work. While the heavy part stays, the time saved is smaller than it looks.
"Fill with Gemini" took over repetitive work that needs almost no judgment. Fit, I think, depends less on how good a feature is and more on where your work is heavy.
A 15-minute audit for today
- Open the Gemini button in each app and list what you can use (mark the rest "unchecked").
- Mark what you actually pressed in the last six months.
- Leave the unmarked ones closed until next month.
A feature unused for half a year can leave your view for now. The screen feels a little quieter.
Next time something is announced, I'd start by applying these same three buckets. I'm doing the same.