How to Use Gemini’s New Scheduled Actions (and a Few of My Recommendations)
At Google IO, we saw a bunch of new features coming to Gemini, and one of the most interesting ones is rolling out right now. The new Scheduled Actions feature lets you tell Gemini to run suggestions at a specific time in the future, and even repeat them on a regular basis. It doesn’t sound like much, but it opens up quite a few new possibilities.
This scheduling feature is designed to work seamlessly with Gemini’s regular prompts. Ask the chatbot to perform or repeat a task in the future, and it will automatically schedule tasks. You can even convert an existing chat into a scheduled action. Here’s how it works, and some ideas for what you can do with it.
How Scheduled Actions Work in Gemini
While the scheduling feature should work in theory, there are a couple of quirks in practice. In my testing, Gemini sometimes got confused and told me it couldn’t do a task now based on future information. However, a clarifying follow-up action usually worked.
There are also a few key limitations:
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You’ll need a subscription. This feature is currently only available to paid users. You’ll need either Google AI Pro or the ridiculously expensive Google AI Ultra .
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You can only have 10 scheduled actions at a time. Gemini only has 10 slots for scheduled actions, although they can be one-time or recurring.
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You can use your location for an action, but you can’t change it. Gemini supports recurring scheduled actions based on location, such as “Every morning, recommend a coffee shop near me.” The only catch is that the location for this action will use the same location you used when creating the action. It won’t update based on where you are.
Once you’ve scheduled an action, you can see it and all your other saved actions by tapping your profile icon in the Gemini app or by going to Settings on the web and selecting Scheduled Actions. You can’t do anything here other than pause or delete the action, but if you want to cancel the instructions, you have that option.
Get your email summary every day
I admit, when I hear the standard AI use case of “get a digest of your emails!” I start to question it. Is it really more effective to ask a chatbot to digest your emails than to just go through them yourself? Well, if you only have to ask once. Ask Gemini something like “Give me a digest of my new unread emails every morning,” and you’ll get a notification every day.
You can take this approach even further by giving Gemini specific instructions for your needs. For example, you can instruct Gemini to highlight all emails from your boss, or to filter out promotional emails, sales emails, or newsletters.
Keep in mind that this method has the same error rate as everything else in Gemini (or any AI-powered chatbot, for that matter). It’s great for quickly reviewing messages waiting for you, but it’s still probably a good idea to check your inbox before telling your boss you didn’t get that email.
Create weekly itineraries based on calendar events
With a Workspace connection, you can ask Gemini to give you a summary of all the events on your calendar for the week. Since Gemini can also query Google Maps, you can even ask complex questions, like how far is a doctor’s appointment from your home.
Again, the power of this technique lies in how you can ask Gemini to give you specific types of information or how to format the route it presents. For example, on a day when I had two meetings in different parts of the city, I asked Gemini how much time I would spend driving. It was able to add up the various estimated driving times and give me a total.
It can take a little fiddling to get the wording right. It took a few tries before I settled on telling Gemini directly, “Let’s say I start and end my day at home,” but once I found a prompt that worked, the scheduled action meant I only had to write it once.
Schedule requests for specific events
Sometimes you know the information you need, but you don’t have it yet. For example, you want to know who won an Oscar, but you don’t plan to watch the show. You can schedule a request in advance, and once the big day arrives, Gemini will summarize the information for you.
Personally, I find it a little more useful for things where the search is more complex than just “who won?” For example, Death Stranding 2 is coming out very soon. And while there’s nothing stopping me from playing it myself, I’d still like to read a selection of reviews.
So, next week I have an invite scheduled to bring me a roundup of reviews from some of my favorite sites. Personally, I don’t want a general summary (I read what people write for a reason), but you can ask Gemini for specific questions, like what the reviewers think of the game mechanics, or how confusing they think the story is.
Do more with Agent Mode in the future
There are already some interesting uses for this feature, but it’s worth noting that Google has shown off much more. As part of its Agent Mode demo, the company showed an example of asking Gemini to find new apartments each week and send the user a summary.
These kinds of tasks require much more autonomy than the public version of Gemini is capable of now, but it highlights how useful scheduled actions could become in the future. We’ll have to evaluate how well Agent Mode handles complex tasks, but for now, Gemini can perform simple internet queries, collect your emails and calendar, and execute some complex plans.