Home › Gem backup checklist
Google shuts Gems down for personal accounts onNovember 17, 2026, and you cannot create or edit new Gems after October 13. The fastest safe order is: download every Gem's files first, convert them to SKILL.md, then verify each one. This checklist takes about ten minutes per Gem and nothing here depends on Google's migration running smoothly.
Do these four things, in this order:
Nothing on this list requires the migration to work. That is the point.
Google will convert your Gems automatically. That is not the same as a backup, for three reasons.
| What you assume | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| "Google keeps a copy I can come back to" | After November 17 there is no Gems interface to come back to, and no documented restore path |
| "The migration preserves everything" | Canvas, Deep Research, video, music, and Guided Learning do not carry over |
| "A converted skill just works" | Migrated skills arrive disabled and must be enabled one by one |
Google Labs pre-built Gems are the clearest case: they are switched off with no conversion path at all, and the instructions have to be rewritten by hand. See what will not convert for the full list.
Open each Gem in turn and download its files. Do this for all of them even if you think a Gem is trivial — the cost of skipping one is total loss, and the cost of doing it is a minute.
| Item | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| The instruction text, verbatim | This is the whole Gem. Everything else is scaffolding. |
| The Gem's name and short description | Needed to rebuild it; names may be reusable after shutdown |
| Any uploaded reference files | Often cannot be re-attached after the Gem is gone |
| A screenshot of the Gem's settings pane | Cheap insurance if you forget whether an option was on |
| The date of export, in the filename | So you know which copy is current if you edit later |
Name files so they sort correctly — 2026-10-14-gem-name.md rather than gem-final-v2-final.md. You will not remember which of eleven identically-named files is the real one in five weeks.
Somewhere you control, not only inside Gemini. A local folder synced to your own cloud storage works. Do not keep the only copy inside the Gemini account, because the point of the exercise is surviving the shutdown of that account's Gems feature.
Two copies is the practical minimum. One on your machine, one synced somewhere else. If your only copy is on the machine that dies, the backup did nothing.
A Gem is prose instructions. A skill needs a specific file shape: YAML frontmatter followed by markdown.
---
name: gem-name-lowercase-with-hyphens
description: What this does. Use when the user asks about X.
---
# Section heading
Instructions here.Three rules cause most of the trouble:
name must be lowercase letters, digits, and hyphens only, 1 to 64 characters, with no leading, trailing, or doubled hyphen.description must be 1 to 1024 characters and describe what the skill does and when to use it.name must match the folder name exactly. This is the one that fails silently.The converter handles all three if you paste the instructions and give the name. The format reference documents every field and file type.
This is the step people skip, and it is the one that matters most.
If the folder name does not match the name field, the upload succeeds, the skill appears in your list, and it never triggers. No warning, no error, no indication that anything is wrong. You can leave it there for months and never know why the skill never fires.
Paste each file into the validator and give it the folder name. It checks the name rules, the description, the folder match, binary file types, and external network calls in the body — the things that produce silent failures and rejected uploads.
Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, which matters when the instructions are commercial or client work.
Migrated skills and manually uploaded skills both end up in the same place, and both may need to be turned on.
Ten minutes now beats discovering this in January. After November 17 the Gems interface is gone, the export path may not be, and the skill list is your only remaining evidence of what you had.
Some things do not survive conversion, and planning around them is better than hoping:
| Capability | Status in Skills |
|---|---|
| Canvas | Not supported |
| Deep Research | Not supported |
| Video generation | Not supported |
| Music generation | Not supported |
| Guided Learning | Not supported |
| Google Labs pre-built Gems | No conversion path at all |
If a Gem depended on one of those, the instruction text is worth saving even though the capability is not portable. You may be able to rebuild the behaviour with a different approach later.
Download every Gem's files to your own machine. Two copies.
Turn each export into a valid SKILL.md with the right name and description.
Check the folder name matches. This catches the silent failure.
Disabled drafts do nothing. Turn each one on and test with a real prompt.
Do all four for one Gem before starting the next. It is easier to keep track of and you will know it is finished.
A backup you cannot read back is not a backup. Decide what the files are for beforeNovember 17 arrives, because the migration itself will not ask you.
Save the downloaded files exactly as Gemini produced them, alongside your converted SKILL.md files. When something goes wrong in six months, the unmodified export is the only version you know is faithful. Edit a copy, never the original.
| Gem type | Recommended action |
|---|---|
| Plain instructions, no unsupported features | Convert, validate, upload, enable, test. Straightforward. |
| Relied on Canvas or Deep Research | Convert the text anyway, and note in the file what the capability was doing so you can rebuild it |
| Relied on video or music generation | Same — the instructions may still be useful even though the capability is gone |
| Google Labs pre-built | No conversion path. Save the instruction text and rewrite it as a skill by hand. |
| You cannot remember what it did | Export it anyway. A forgotten Gem is exactly the one you cannot recreate. |
These come up repeatedly and each one costs you something that cannot be recovered.
| Mistake | What it costs |
|---|---|
| Trusting the automatic migration as the backup | No independent copy exists. If a Gem converts badly, there is nothing to compare against. |
| Exporting only the Gems you remember | The forgotten ones are gone, and you will not know which they were. |
| Saving files with vague names | Eleven files called gem.md and you cannot tell which is current. |
| Skipping the folder-name check | The skill uploads, appears in the list, and never triggers. No error anywhere. |
| Assuming migrated skills are active | They arrive disabled. You find out when nothing happens. |
| Uploading to the Gemini App but not Workspace | The skill works in one surface and appears missing in the other. |
| Number of Gems | Export and convert | With validation |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | About 5 minutes | About 10 minutes |
| 5 | About 25 minutes | About 50 minutes |
| 10 | About 50 minutes | About 100 minutes |
| 20 | About 100 minutes | About 3 to 4 hours |
These are deliberately generous. Exporting is fast; converting and validating is where the time goes, and skipping validation is what creates problems you will not find until you need the skill.
Start with the Gems you actually use. If you have twenty and rely on two, do those two today and come back. The goal is not a tidy archive — it is not losing work you cannot recreate.
Google has not documented a restore path for Gems after shutdown. Export your files before the date and keep them. Treat any recovery promise after that as unverified.
You will be exporting under time pressure, possibly while the migration is running. The export path may be slower or partially unavailable. The whole checklist takes ten minutes per Gem; there is no reason to compress it into the last day.
Yes, if they exist. A Gem you forgot about is exactly the one whose content you cannot recreate, because you no longer remember what it was for.
Yes. Conversion and validation run entirely in your browser as local JavaScript. Your text is not sent to any server. There is no account and nothing is stored. See the privacy policy.
No. They arrive as disabled drafts and must be enabled individually. A migrated skill that looks fine in the list may not be running until you switch it on.
No. Skills in the Gemini App and skills in Workspace are separate, and the same skill must be uploaded twice if you use both surfaces.
Up to 100 active at once, and up to 100 MB of uploads in total. Both limits are documented on the format reference page.
Text formats, plus PDF, JPG, and PNG. Binary formats such as .docx, .doc, and .xlsx are not supported. Scripts inside a skill must not fetch external URLs.
You can convert the instruction text, but those capabilities do not carry over. Expect to rebuild that behaviour differently. The migration risks page covers each case.
You cannot — Gems cannot be edited after October 13 and the feature is gone after November 17. Keep the exports. They are the only copy.
The upload succeeds and the skill never triggers. Rename the folder to match the name field, or change the name to match the folder. The validator checks this before you upload.