Gemini app rolling out Audio Overviews to Android, iOS

As announced earlier this week, the Gemini app is getting the ability to generate Audio Overview podcasts, with Android and iOS users beginning to see this capability today.

Audio Overviews have widely rolled out on the web for free Gemini and paid Advanced subscribers in English, with more languages coming soon.

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On mobile, uploading a document or slideshow will show a new “Generate Audio Overview” suggestion chip alongside “Talk Live about this” (which has not fully launched on Android). You can also open the overflow menu in Deep Research reports to generate a podcast.

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After tapping, it takes a few minutes for the conversation between two AI hosts to generate. Google will send a notification when it’s ready. The other way to access is by going to the Chats history in the top-left corner of the homescreen. Before today’s launch, you could not access past Audio Overviews in your history on mobile.

Something unexpected about this capability is how the Gemini app has no built-in audio player. Instead, tapping the “Gemini Audio Overview” directly opens the file (.m4a) in a browser tab. As such, you’re interacting with the default Chrome, iOS, etc. player, though it does allow for straightforward downloads. This is strange since gemini.google.com has an inline player for Audio Overviews.

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These podcasts can be up to several minutes in length, with the aim being to ”summarize the material, draw connections between topics, engage in a dynamic back-and-forth and provide unique perspectives.” One thing to keep in mind with file-based Audio Overviews is that the conversation is based on that source and not real-world knowledge. It’s different with Deep Research-derived podcasts.