Google Gemini

AI Assistant Reviewed October 2026

These are reasonable defaults - not the only right choices. If your current settings work for you, there is no pressure to change anything.

What the default settings do

Gemini’s consumer app keeps a record of your conversations through a setting called Keep Activity, found on the Gemini Apps Activity page. For accounts 18 and older, it is on by default. With it on, your chats and what you share with Gemini, such as files, photos, screens, and Gemini Live audio and video, are saved to your Google Account, where you can review and delete them through My Activity. Google uses this saved activity to provide and improve its services, including training generative AI models, with help from human reviewers. The history is auto-deleted after 18 months by default, and you can change that to 3 or 36 months or turn auto-delete off.

Audio is handled separately. Even with Keep Activity on, Google says your audio, Gemini Live videos, and screenshares are not used to improve its services by default. That only happens if you turn on a separate option in Gemini Apps Activity that lets Google use them, which also means some of those recordings can be reviewed by people.

There’s an important caveat that applies no matter how you set Keep Activity. Google’s own privacy documentation states that temporary chats, and chats you have with Keep Activity off, are still retained with your account for up to 72 hours so Google can respond to you and handle safety and abuse prevention. There is no setting that gets you to zero retention on the consumer product; 72 hours is the practical floor.

Separately, Google reviews a sample of conversations by hand to improve Gemini’s quality. If one of your chats is selected for this kind of human review, Google disconnects it from your account before a reviewer sees it, but that disconnected copy is then kept for up to three years. Deleting your activity through My Activity does not reach or remove this separately retained set. Turning Keep Activity off does stop future conversations from being saved for this human review and model-training pipeline.

Gemini can also connect to other services through Connected Apps: Google apps like Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Docs, and Photos, and third-party services, including tools on Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. Google notes it does not control or secure third-party MCP servers, so only connect ones you trust. Some connected apps, including Google Workspace apps, stop working if you turn Keep Activity off, and come back when you turn it on again. Personal Intelligence, a newer feature for eligible users, goes further by letting Gemini draw on connected apps like Gmail and Photos to personalize answers. Google says it is off by default and opt-in, and you pick which apps to connect.

On ads, Google’s Gemini privacy hub currently says your Gemini Apps chats are not being used to show you ads, and that it will clearly tell you if that changes.

Gemini for Google Workspace, the version built into business and education accounts, works differently from the consumer app: Google states this Workspace content is not used to train its generative models and is not reviewed by humans for that purpose, consistent with the data handling commitments Workspace already makes for other core services.

A reasonable privacy baseline

These settings are found at gemini.google.com, in the Activity panel and personalization settings, or directly through myactivity.google.com/product/gemini.

Activity and retention

Gemini Apps Activity → Keep Activity → Off (or Turn off and delete activity)

Turning this off stops new conversations from being saved to your account and from being used to improve Google's models with human review. It does not change the 72-hour operational retention that applies regardless of this setting, and it disables Workspace and some other connected apps until you turn it back on.

Gemini Apps Activity → Auto-delete → 3 months (default is 18 months)

If you'd rather keep activity on for the convenience of searchable history, connected apps, and personalization, shortening the auto-delete window to 3 months, the shortest option offered alongside 18 and 36 months, limits how long that history persists without eliminating it entirely.

Temporary chats → Use for sensitive one-off questions

Temporary chats are not saved to your Gemini Apps Activity or used to personalize future responses, but the same 72-hour operational retention applies to them as it does to conversations when Keep Activity is off. Treat this as reducing your footprint, not achieving full ephemerality.

Audio, Gemini Live, and screenshares

Gemini Apps Activity → let Google use your audio and Gemini Live videos and screenshares to improve its services → Leave Off (off by default)

This is a separate choice from Keep Activity. If you turn it on, Google uses the audio, Live video, and screenshares stored in your activity, including ones already saved, to improve its services and train models, and some are reviewed by people. Gemini can also start listening by accident when it mistakes a sound for "Hey Google," so leaving this off keeps those clips out of the improvement pipeline too.

Connected apps and personal context

gemini.google.com → Connected Apps settings → Review and disconnect unused services

This list covers Google apps and third-party services, including MCP server tools. Each is opt-in and can be disconnected individually. Disconnecting an app stops future access but does not delete anything already saved in your Gemini Apps Activity, and data Gemini already shared with another app stays under that app's own policies.

Personal Intelligence → Leave off unless you want Gemini reading across your Google apps

Where available, Personal Intelligence lets Gemini use content from apps like Gmail and Photos to tailor answers. It is opt-in, you choose which apps to connect, and you can turn it off at any time. Google says Gemini references that content to answer you rather than training directly on your inbox or photo library.

Human review

No direct opt-out from human review beyond keeping Activity off → Understand the trade-off

There's no separate toggle for the human-review pipeline itself; keeping Keep Activity off is what keeps future conversations out of it. If a past conversation was already selected for review while activity was on, deleting that item from My Activity does not remove the disconnected copy Google may be holding for up to three years.

Trade-offs

Turning off Keep Activity means Gemini won’t build a persistent memory of your preferences, and it also switches off Workspace and some other connected apps, so you lose both continuity and integrations until you turn it back on.
The 72-hour operational retention applies no matter what you choose, so there is no setting on the consumer product that guarantees your conversation is fully gone the moment you close the tab.
Leaving the audio and Live option off means your voice and video sessions don’t help improve Google’s speech features, which is a minor cost for most people.
Shortening auto-delete to 3 months means losing the ability to search back further in your own Gemini history if you find that useful for recalling past research or drafts.
Disconnecting Gmail, Drive, MCP tools, or other services, or skipping Personal Intelligence, removes Gemini’s ability to reference their contents directly, which may mean more manual copy-pasting to get the same help.
Because human review happens on a sample of conversations rather than all of them, keeping activity on does not guarantee any specific conversation will or won’t be reviewed; it only affects whether it’s eligible.

Who should not change these settings

If you use Gemini as a daily assistant and rely on it remembering context from earlier conversations, or on connected Workspace apps, keeping Keep Activity on with a shorter auto-delete window supports that while limiting how long history lasts.
If you want to help Google improve Gemini’s responses and are comfortable with a small chance of a human reviewer seeing a disconnected copy of a conversation, leaving activity on is a reasonable and informed choice, not a mistake.
If you regularly use Gemini alongside Gmail, Drive, or Docs for drafting and research, keeping those connections, or Personal Intelligence, active is likely worth the convenience, especially if you already trust Google with that data through those services directly.
If you’re on a Workspace or education account through your employer or school, Google’s stated handling of that data is already separate from the consumer training and human-review pipeline, so there is typically less to change on this front specifically.