Digital updates: July 2026
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7 minute read
Google Classroom takes centre stage this month: Gemini’s teaching tools arrive in the Classroom mobile apps, staff and students can attach Gemini Canvas creations straight to assignments, and the Gemini app can now connect to your Classroom to help with planning and progress questions.
Elsewhere, you can now manage delegated Gmail accounts from the mobile app, Google Calendar adds custom event colours, and you can join a Google Meet call from Safari on an iPhone—no app required.
Google Classroom
Gemini tools on mobile and new visual prompts
The Gemini tab in Google Classroom is now available in the Android and iOS apps. Teachers can use tools such as Generate a quiz, Brainstorm project ideas, Craft a compelling hook, and Tackle common misconceptions on the go, and students can access their starter prompts and personal class notebooks from the mobile app too.
New starter prompts also help teachers create visuals that illustrate complex topics: Create an infographic, Draw a comic strip, and Visualize a concept. Three further prompts use Gemini’s Canvas tool to generate a slide deck for a given concept and year group: Create a presentation, Create an interactive activity, and Convert a file to Google slides.
Learn about Gemini in Classroom
Share Gemini Canvas creations to Classroom
You can now attach things you’ve made in Gemini Canvas—quizzes, interactive games, infographics—directly to Classroom assignments and posts. From Gemini Canvas, select Share, then Share to Classroom, and choose the class or assignment to add it to. Sharing follows the same rules as your existing Drive sharing settings.
Read Along now included for everyone
Read Along is an AI-powered literacy tool built into Google Classroom. Teachers set interactive reading activities, and as students read aloud, a reading buddy gives real-time help with pronunciation and breaks down tricky words, with comprehension questions woven into the material. A dashboard shows accuracy, speed, comprehension, and phonics skills for individual students and the whole class, and Gemini can generate stories tailored to specific phonics skills, topics, and reading levels. For students learning English, support can be given in both English and their home language, including Spanish, Portuguese, Urdu, and Arabic.
Google has now made Read Along available to every Workspace for Education user at no cost. Nothing changes at Outwood—we already have it—but if it’s new to you, it’s well worth exploring.
Read Along in Google Classroom
Gemini app
Connect Google Classroom to Gemini
Gemini can now draw on context from your Google Classroom to inform its answers. Teachers can ask for insights on student progress, draft differentiated assignments and plans based on class content, summarise who has submitted work, and update assignment details across classes in draft mode. Gemini will spot when Classroom context is relevant, or you can call on it explicitly by typing "@Classroom" in your prompt.
Gemini can’t enter grades, give private feedback, or post directly to your classes—anything it drafts stays as a draft until you post it yourself.
Ask about your Google Classroom in Gemini
Temporary chats and chat deletion
You can now start a temporary chat in the Gemini app—a conversation that isn’t saved to your chat history. You can also delete individual chats, or your entire history, from the app’s settings. Both are useful for quick one-off questions you don’t need to keep.
Gmail
Delegated accounts in the mobile app
If you manage a shared or delegated mailbox, you can now do so from the Gmail app on Android and iOS. Delegates can switch between their own inbox and delegated accounts, see unread counts for each, view everything together in the All inboxes view, and send messages on the account’s behalf. Access works automatically for anyone already set up as a delegate on the web.
This update is rolling out now, and is expected to reach all Android users by 8 July and all iOS users by 29 July.
Delegate and collaborate on email
Google Vids
More expressive AI avatars
AI avatars in Google Vids have had a significant upgrade. The gallery of ready-made avatars has grown from 23 to 53, spanning photorealistic, 3D cartoon, and graphic novel styles, and avatars now speak with more expression and a more conversational tone.
Avatars and voiceovers now support 24 languages, with 16 new additions including Hindi, Arabic, Polish, Turkish, and Ukrainian. Custom avatars—like the branded avatars covered in May’s update—gain a choice of more than 30 voices, and you can now direct them to take action in generated video clips: describe what your avatar should do in a text prompt, and it will walk, talk, and interact with objects while keeping its appearance and voice consistent.
Extend clips and generate several at once
You can now extend an AI-generated video clip in Google Vids to create longer scenes, with characters and storytelling kept consistent across the extension. You can also kick off several video generation requests at the same time, making it quicker to try out different styles and prompts side by side.
Use AI to generate video clips in Google Vids
Google Calendar
Custom event colours
Google Calendar is moving beyond its long-standing set of 11 event colours. You can now pick from 24 default colours, and on the web a full colour picker lets you define up to 200 custom colours of your own—handy for colour-coding lessons, duties, and meetings exactly the way you like.
This update is rolling out gradually and may not yet be visible to all users.
Colour-code your calendar entries
Google Chat
Discoverable spaces
Spaces in Google Chat gain a third access option, sitting between private (invite-only) and open (anyone can join). A discoverable space appears when colleagues browse for spaces, but its conversation history stays private until a space manager approves their request to join. This works well for working groups and staff communities that want to be easy to find without opening up their full discussion history.
Space owners and managers can change this from the space’s settings.
Google Meet
Join calls from Safari on iPhone
iPhone users without the Gmail or Meet apps can now join Google Meet calls directly in Safari. Anyone following a meeting link is taken straight to the call in the browser, and guests without a Google account simply enter their name to request entry. This makes it easier for external guests to join a Meet call from a personal phone.
This update is rolling out gradually and may not yet be visible to all users.
Meet on Android Auto
Google Meet is now available on Android Auto. From your car’s display you can check your upcoming meetings and join with a single tap—audio only, with your camera off—so you can catch a briefing hands-free while travelling between sites.
Google Sheets
Import 3D bar charts
Spreadsheets imported into Google Sheets—including Microsoft Excel files—now keep their 3D bar charts intact. Previously these were converted to flat 2D charts on import.
Add and edit charts in Google Sheets
Adobe Express
Extract audio from video
You can now pull the audio track out of a video and edit it separately from the footage.
Layout guide presets
Ready-made guide grids can be applied to a design in a couple of clicks, making it easier to keep layouts consistent across pages and projects.
Manage pages from the canvas or with a prompt
Working with multi-page designs is now quicker in two ways. Page actions such as add, duplicate, move, resize, and delete appear directly on the multi-page canvas, right where you’re working. You can also manage pages by asking the AI Assistant—for example, “add a new page” or “duplicate page two”.
Preview click order
You can now check the click order of your presentation—covered in June’s update—directly in the editor, so animations, video, and audio play exactly as they will in Present mode before you go live.
Use click order in presentations
Translate designs into more languages
The Translate tool supports six additional languages, including British English, Canadian French, and European Portuguese.