Google’s Gemini app just crossed a crucial threshold: you can now upload audio files for the assistant to analyze, summarize, and act on. It’s the single most requested capability for the service, and it arrives alongside broader “any file type” support across Android, iOS, and the web, signaling a decisive push into truly multimodal workflows.
What changed and how it works
Josh Woodward, VP of Google Labs and Gemini, announced that users can now attach audio alongside images, documents, and other files directly in the compose window. Tap the plus button, choose Files (mobile) or Upload files (web), and drop in formats like MP3 or WAV. The shift from text-and-image inputs to “any file” turns Gemini into a more flexible hub for real-world tasks, where spoken content often lives outside email and docs.
Google has updated its Help Center to reflect the change. You can include up to 10 files in a single prompt. Audio uploads are processed in the same thread as your text, so the assistant can answer questions, generate action items, translate passages, or draft follow-ups based on what it hears.
Limits, tiers, and the fine print
There are guardrails. For free users, the total length of audio in one prompt is capped at 10 minutes. Subscribers on Google’s premium AI plans get a dramatically higher ceiling: up to three hours of audio per prompt. The app still accepts up to 10 files at once, with length counting across all attached audio clips.
It’s also worth noting how audio compares to video inside Gemini. Video uploads remain limited to five minutes for free users and up to one hour on paid tiers. By contrast, the three-hour audio allowance for subscribers reflects a clear priority on voice-driven workflows, where meetings, interviews, and lectures can stretch beyond typical video snippets.
Why audio uploads matter
Voice is where much of our unstructured information lives. Sales calls, research interviews, lecture recordings, and podcast notes all pile up as audio that’s difficult to search or summarize. Now, instead of juggling separate transcription tools or cloud drives, users can hand Gemini the raw files and get outputs tailored to their goals—key takeaways, timestamps, next steps, even draft emails.
The timing aligns with broader behavior shifts. Meta has reported that WhatsApp users send billions of voice messages daily, a signal that voice is a preferred medium for quick capture and communication. On the content side, Edison Research has consistently tracked growth in podcast listening, underscoring how much knowledge sits inside spoken word. Bringing that audio into a reasoning engine helps convert passive listening into actionable insight.
How it stacks up
Rivals have been racing toward similar multimodal fluency. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Anthropic’s Claude all support richer inputs, with varying levels of fidelity and context length. Google’s differentiator is scale and integration: Gemini already ties into Android system features, Gmail, Docs, and Drive, which makes audio understanding more useful when it can immediately influence your productivity stack.
Under the hood, Google’s most recent multimodal models are designed to handle long-context inputs, which should help with hour-long recordings on paid plans. The key questions now are quality and speed: how well does Gemini separate speakers, capture nuances, and return coherent summaries under heavy load? Google’s enterprise speech services have long offered robust transcription; bringing similar reliability into the consumer assistant would be a competitive advantage.
Early takeaways and what to watch
For individual users, the fastest wins will be meeting and class summaries, interview highlights, and multilingual translation of short clips. For teams, the three-hour cap on paid plans opens the door to analyzing full customer calls or webinars without jumping between tools. Privacy and data controls will be top of mind; expect Google to emphasize on-device safeguards on Android and clearer policies in its support materials as usage grows.
The bigger picture is straightforward: bringing audio into the same pane of glass as text, images, and video lets Gemini operate on the media you actually use. The feature many users asked for is here, and its practical impact will depend on how accurately—and how fast—the assistant can turn hours of speech into something you can act on in minutes.