It appears that Google has quietly updated Gemini"s powers for free users. Notably, the file upload and analyze feature, which was introduced last year for paid Gemini Advanced tier subscribers, is now available for free Gemini users.
We tested this by installing the latest version of the Gemini app from the Play Store. And in our testing, the ability to upload and analyze files was available. The app also showed an "Upload files to get quick summaries and actionable insights" message prompt upon opening the Gemini app for the first time.
You can tap the "+" icon on the bottom-left to see all the options to upload files. Notably, Gemini has now added two new options: Files and Drive, which now appear alongside the existing Camera and Gallery options. According to 9To5Google, the two new upload options were also visible on the free Gemini users on the web as well.
Free Gemini users can now upload files directly from the Google Drive app or web. Using the upload files and analyze feature, you can upload a document and ask questions about it or summarize the document. As of writing this news, the official support documents for this feature are not yet updated and it still says uploading files requires a Gemini Advanced subscription.
While there is no information about the file upload limitations for free Gemini users, Gemini Advanced users can upload up to 10 files at a time and each file should be 100MB or less. Here are the file formats you can upload and analyze on Gemini:
Plain text files: TXT
Code files including C, CPP, PY, JAVA, PHP, SQL, and HTML
Document files: DOC, DOCX, PDF, RTF, DOT, DOTX, HWP, HWPX
Documents created in Google Docs
Tabular data files: CSV, TSV
Spreadsheet files: XLS, XLSX
Spreadsheets created in Google Sheets
Upon uploading a PDF file to our Galaxy S24 Ultra phone, Gemini shows a "Talk Live about this" option. It appears that the ability to upload and analyze files is not widely available. Currently, the feature only works with Gemini 2.0 Flash and not the older model.