Google's chatty Keep Live and Gmail Live interfaces make first appearance

Talking to your electronics now seems like the natural (foreseeable) future. Giants, including Google and Apple, can’t miss the opportunity to render voice-first gateways, letting users interact with their devices mostly by talking and less by tapping the screen. Latest previews of both Siri and Gemini show a promising outlook for this future, and Google even wants each app to have its own conversational abilities similar to Gemini Live.

Last month at I/O, Google demonstrated new voice features coming to Gmail, Docs, and Keep. It said the features would roll out over the summer, and even though there’s no concrete timeline, it’s reasonable to expect them to arrive alongside the upcoming Pixel 11 phones. Ahead of the rollout, we’ve spotted it being tested.

We were recently able to toggle on Live conversational features in Google Keep. It’s worth clarifying that Live is not currently available for all users, and we tweaked the app to get it working.

Here, we see a new Live floating action button (FAB) show up above the Create a note button. Tapping the button opens a voice-centric interface where you can start creating new notes, or editing existing ones, by speaking. You can also create reminders, but those would be handed off to Tasks.

At the bottom of this interface, you see buttons to mute the mic, send instructions when you’re done, and cancel the current stream of thoughts from being noted down.

Additionally, we’re seeing reports about a similar voice interface already coming to another Google app: Gmail. We were recently tipped off about Gmail Live emerging for at least one user. Since we don’t have it on our devices, we suspect it is only being tested for some of the users. Meanwhile, a “Beta” icon on the page seems to confirm its status as under trial.

We’ll share an update when we witness a wider test or rollout.