Gemini Spark

Everything else in Gemini answers you. Spark does the work instead. You hand over a job, it goes away and does it, and it comes back either finished or because it needs you. Three things before we start. It sits on a paid plan. It needs a personal Google account, not a work or school one. And it carries a beta label — most of it is built, one part isn't, and I'll show you which.

You'll find Spark as a toggle at the top of the sidebar, sitting next to Chat. What opens looks like an ordinary chat box, and the difference is what you put in it — a job rather than a question. Go through my inbox, find every invoice from last month, put them in a spreadsheet. Describe the outcome, attach anything it needs, and send it. Gemini shows you its plan before it starts, then works through it step by step. Below the task box are the three things that shape how it works: Schedules, Skills and Connected apps.

Then there's when. A schedule is the trigger. You can build one yourself, or describe it and let Gemini build it for you. This one runs weekly, weekdays, around nine in the morning — and a schedule can watch for something instead of running on a clock, like a booking confirmation landing in your inbox. Set it once and the job runs on its own, whether your laptop is open or shut, because the work happens on Google's side rather than on your machine. Two things worth knowing: it runs at approximate times rather than on the dot, and it won't run at all if you've used up your limit.

Then what it can reach. Connected apps is where you decide that, and it's the screen worth visiting before you hand over anything real. One switch turns on Google Workspace — Gmail, Docs, Drive and Keep — and there's a list beyond Google underneath it, which keeps growing. A task can only touch what you've turned on here. That's the limit on what Spark can do for you, and it's the limit on what it can get at.

That leaves how. Google describes Spark in three parts: a task is what, a schedule is when, and a skill is how — instructions you write once, so every job that needs them gets done your way rather than Gemini's. Skills has its own page in the sidebar, and right now there's nothing on it. That's the beta label showing.

Handing work to something that acts on your behalf deserves a moment. Spark asks before it sends anything, spends anything, or submits a form, and it hands the keyboard back to you for passwords and card details. You can watch every step, stop it mid-task, and take the browser over yourself. Two habits worth building: don't type passwords or card numbers into a task thread, and don't schedule anything you wouldn't be comfortable running while you're asleep — because it will.

Pick one job you do every week and resent doing. Describe it to Spark once, put a schedule on it, and see what comes back. From then on you're checking the work instead of doing it.