For months, Google’s Gemini app has been able to chew through images, PDFs, and even video uploads, but audio was conspicuously absent. That changes today. Google quietly flipped the switch on one of Gemini’s most-requested features: audio file uploads.
Expanded support, expanded use cases
A feature users have wanted for months
Vice President of Google Labs and Gemini Josh Woodward confirmed the rollout on X, calling it the “#1 request.” The update is live across Android, iOS, and the web, letting you drop in MP3s, WAVs, and most other common formats by hitting the familiar “Upload files” option.
As you might imagine, there is a small caveat. Free-tier Gemini users can upload up to 10 files at a time, but the total audio length across those uploads can’t exceed 10 minutes. If you’re on Google’s paid tiers — Gemini Advanced via AI Pro or AI Ultra — that cap jumps significantly, to three hours.
While it’s not unlimited, it is relatively generous. By comparison, Gemini video uploads remain capped at five minutes for free users, with paid users allowed an hour. Audio doubles that free allowance while offering three times the headroom for paid plans, which makes sense for use cases like transcription, parsing meeting notes, or analyzing podcasts.
The lack of audio support has been a weird omission since file uploads arrived earlier this year. Gemini could already summarize YouTube videos and handle short clips you threw at it, but recording a quick voice memo and asking the AI to work with it wasn’t possible until now.
This puts Gemini closer to feature parity with rivals like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has supported audio uploads and transcription for months. Whether 10 minutes is enough for casual users is up for debate, and the disparity indicates Google wants audio processing to act as another subscription driver. Regardless, if you’ve been waiting to throw a podcast snippet, lecture clip, or your own rambling voice notes into Gemini, now’s your chance to try it.
