Gemini shines with a new floating overlay panel, which rolls

Following the live stream that went live earlier this week, Gemini has also started rolling out the floating overlay panel to Android, with the glow being the obvious sign that you’ve got it.

When you turn on Gemini, you’ll notice a new glowing animation around the panel. Besides looking pretty (and vaguely resembling the new Google Assistant design from 2019), this signals that you have a new contextual layer of Gemini.

First announced at I/O 2024 in May, Gemini’s responses will appear in this panel (which can be expanded) rather than opening up a full-screen UI. In addition to keeping context of what you’re doing and reducing clutter, this is coupled with Gemini’s image creation. You can drag anything you’ve created into apps like Gmail or Google Messages.

You can click on the upper right corner to open the full screen interface.

With this release, you’ll also get an “Ask about this video” slide — instead of “Ask about this screen” — when you activate Gemini on a YouTube video. You can have Gemini summarize or ask follow-up questions.

The Gemini floating layer with this new glow hasn’t been widely rolled out yet. Compared to Gemini Live, availability is more limited. We’ve seen it on our own Pixel 8 Pro and have received other reports of its availability.

Google said Tuesday that it will be available in the coming weeks on Android for both Gemini users and Gemini Advanced subscribers.