Emojis reactions in Gmail will now be on by default

What’s changing

In 2025, we introduced the ability to react to emails in Gmail with emojis. This feature lets users respond quickly to acknowledge receipt of an email in a fun, informal and more authentic way. While initially enabled as an opt-in feature for early customer access, starting February 9, 2026, emoji reactions in Gmail will be enabled by default.

Organizations wishing to disable this feature can do so at any time in the Admin console, and the feature will not be enabled by default for organizations who have previously disabled or modified this feature setting in the Admin console (check the Audit & Investigation tool to confirm). 

Whether you’re using a ‘thanks’ emoji to express gratitude, voting for a team dinner with a food emoji, or congratulating your client for reaching a milestone with a celebratory emoji, emoji reactions provide an expressive and more personal way to respond to emails.

Note that reactions cannot be sent in certain scenarios, for example if an email was received via a Google Group email alias or if there is a Google Group on the recipient list. Visit the Help Center to learn more about these scenarios.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers.

Resources

Ultrahuman launches features 15% faster with Gemini in Android Studio

Posted by Amrit Sanjeev, Developer Relations Engineer and Trevor Johns, Developer Relations Engineer




Ultrahuman is a consumer health-tech startup that provides daily well-being insights to users based on biometric data from the company’s wearables, like the RING Air and the M1 Live Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM). The Ultrahuman team leaned on Gemini in Android Studio's contextually aware tools to streamline and accelerate their development process.


Ultrahuman’s app is maintained by a lean team of just eight developers. They prioritize building features that their users love, and have a backlog of bugs and needed performance improvements that take a lot of time. The team needed to scale up their output of feature improvements, and also needed to handle their performance improvements, without increasing headcount. One of their biggest opportunities was reducing the amount of time and effort for their backlog: every hour saved on maintenance could be reinvested into working on features for their users.





Solving technical hurdles and boosting performance with Gemini


The team integrated Gemini in Android Studio to see if the AI enhanced tools could improve their workflow by handling many Android tasks. First, the team turned to the Gemini chat inside Android Studio. The goal was to prototype a GATT Server implementation for their application’s Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity. 





As Ultrahuman’s Android Development Lead, Arka, noted, “Gemini helped us reach a working prototype in under an hour—something that would have otherwise taken us several hours.” The BLE implementation provided by Gemini worked perfectly for syncing large amounts of health sensor data while the app ran in the background, improving the data syncing process and saving battery life on both the user's Android phone and Ultrahuman's paired wearable device.


Beyond this core challenge, Gemini also proved invaluable for finding algorithmic optimizations in a custom open-source library, pointing to helpful documentation, assisting with code commenting, and analyzing crash logs. The Ultrahuman team also used code completion to help them breeze through writing otherwise repetitive code, Jetpack Compose Preview Generation to enable rapid iteration during UI design, and Agent Mode for managing complex, project-wide changes, such as rendering a new stacked bar graph that mapped to backend data models and UI models.





Transforming productivity and accelerating feature delivery 


These improvements have saved the team dozens of hours each week. This reclaimed time is being used to deliver new features to Ultrahuman’s beta users 10-15% faster. For example, the team built a new in-app AI assistant for users, powered by Gemini 2.5 Flash. The UI design, architecture, and parts of the user experience for this new feature were initially suggested by Gemini in Android Studio—showcasing a full-circle AI-assisted development process. 


Accelerate your Android development with Gemini


Gemini's expert Android advice, closely integrated throughout Android Studio, helps Android developers spend less time digging through documentation and writing boilerplate code—freeing up more time to innovate.


Learn how Gemini in Android Studio can help your team resolve complex issues, streamline workflows, and ship new features faster.

More user control for “Take notes for me” in Google Meet

We’re introducing a new toggle that lets users choose whether they want to have “Take notes for me” start automatically any time they are hosting a meeting. 

Previously, meeting hosts had to manually enable “Take notes for me” when they scheduled a call. Hosts and select participants could also enable the experience during a call. With this update, users can choose to enable this feature any time they host meetings.

This new toggle is OFF by default. Users can choose to enable or disable it at any time. There are also no changes for hosts or select participants to turn meeting notes off at any time during a meeting. 

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Available for Google Workspace:

  • Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Google AI Pro for Education
  • Frontline Plus

Resources

Stable Channel Update for ChromeOS / ChromeOS Flex

The ChromeOS Stable channel is being updated to OS version 16463.72.0 (Browser version 143.0.7499.196) for most ChromeOS devices.

If you find new issues, please let us know one of the following ways:
  1. File a bug
  2. Visit our ChromeOS communities

    1. General: Chromebook Help Community

    2. Beta Specific: ChromeOS Beta Help Community

  3. Report an issue or send feedback on Chrome

  4. Interested in switching channels? Find out how.

Luis Menezes

Google ChromeOS

Early Stable Update for Desktop

 The Stable channel has been updated to 144.0.7559.59 for Windows and Mac as part of our early stable release to a small percentage of users. A full list of changes in this build is available in the log.

You can find more details about early Stable releases here.

Interested in switching release channels?  Find out how here. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.


Srinivas Sista

Google Chrome

Chrome Beta for Desktop Update

The Beta channel has been updated to 144.0.7559.59 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

A partial list of changes is available in the Git log. Interested in switching release channels? Find out how. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.

Chrome Release Team
Google Chrome