The topic I tried Gemini’s Daily Brief, and my morning app-hopping is over is currently the subject of lively discussion — readers and analysts are keeping a close eye on developments.
This is taking place in a dynamic environment: companies’ decisions and competitors’ reactions can quickly change the picture.
Before even trying Gemini’s Daily Brief, I thought it wasn’t going to be much. I thought it would give me a general overview of my tasks, or at least some random news. Guilty as charged for not giving it enough credit. It showed me more than I expected, gave me details that made me think, “Where did it get that from?”, and even offered an additional option for something on my to-do list. Now, it’s something I open every day.
My day would usually start by checking my emails and then seeing what was on my calendar. That’s a circus routine I wasn’t too happy about going through, but there I was. The problem with that routine was that, since I was in Gmail, I would usually get distracted by another email and waste more time than I would like to admit. I would also open Gemini on another tab to ask it what I had to do that day and the following days. That’s three apps before I’d even finish my coffee.
Daily Brief launched on May 19, 2026, and Google says that it’s designed to be the first stop of your day. I have to admit that I actually agree with this. It’s one of the first things I look at in the morning to see what my day looks like. I have most of my life on Google anyway, so this is something that works for me.
It showed me that I had a meeting on Thursday and should reach out to someone between 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM. It would even include information such as a meeting time change and show me deadlines. Google says that, for the time being, there is no option to customize when you receive the Daily Brief. I hope that changes sooner rather than later.
I really like a feature when it’s actually useful, and that’s the case with the dedicated app buttons in Daily Brief. They are easy to see since I can see them right under a specific task. for example, I had to RSVP to a meeting, and since I wanted to take a closer look at the invite, I clicked the View invite button, which opened a new tab with all the meeting details. I could see who was going to be there, emails, schedules, times, any changes to the event, and an option indicating whether I was attending.
I clicked yes, and the Google Calendar app opened to the specific event. When I checked to see if it had really marked “Yes” on my behalf, it did! Now that’s the kind of thing I’d usually do in two apps, not one.
I was surprised to see different follow-up options to the tasks I had to do that day. for example, I had a pending task to clean up my Obsidian vault, and below the task, Gemini displayed a note that said, since I had reset my Obsidian vault from scratch, exploring the best folder strategies and time management plugins would help shape my perfect knowledge base. Below that message were follow-up options to either compare popular calendar plugins or “Brainstorm minimal folder frameworks”.
I clicked the “Compare popular calendar plugins”, and Gemini took me to a new chat where it compared Calendar by Liam Cain and Full Calendar by Spencer Camp. It didn’t just list a brief description of what the Obsidian plugin offered; it divided the information into categories such as Primary Purpose, UI Layout, Visual Indicators, Integrations, and Best For. I was happy with that information alone, but Gemini also added complementary Time & Task alternatives, such as:
To my surprise, it also added information about how to play Texas Hold ‘Em, which I had asked for tips on a few days ago. It showed me follow-up prompts to “Practice reading sample hands” and “Discover basic betting strategies.” I clicked on the first one, and it showed me some examples to learn from. So now I have no excuse for not knowing how to continue a task.
Unfortunately, you can’t see it without paying. The cheapest plan that lets you use the feature is Google AI Plus with a $7.99 price tag. If you’re already paying for other subscriptions, even that price can be frustrating. After all, those numbers add up at the end of the month.
The Plus plan doesn’t come with a free trial, so if you want to test Daily Brief without paying, you would have to sign up for Google AI Pro, which does offer one. The catch is that Pro is $19.99 a month, so you’d be paying for a more expensive tier if you forget to cancel on time.
True, you do have to pay to use the feature. However, if you look at your current subscriptions, you may find one that’s worth canceling to make room for it. Or, there may even be a subscription you forgot you even had. You can test it for a month; if you don’t like it, you’ll have spent only $7.99 and can cancel. For that price, you get 200 GB of cloud storage and 2x higher Gemini usage limits than the free plan, so the price isn’t really just for Daily Brief.
But if you’re not willing to pay a single dime, you can also try Google’s free trial for the Pro plan, which is $19.99 a month. Once the trial ends and you start paying, you get YouTube Premium Lite, which costs $8.99 on its own, plus 5 TB of cloud storage. The only catch is that you’ll need to set a reminder to cancel before they charge you. That’s nothing a reminder can’t fix.
Daily Brief is a tool I’m sticking with. As I said before, I have most of my life on Google anyway, so I know it’ll be helpful to me. I find the action buttons useful, and it’s great that it can also show half-finished tasks I forgot I even started. So far, it’s looking good.
Gemini is Google’s AI model that can answer questions, write, summarize, generate images, and more.