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You can turn a spreadsheet into an app now, with one sentence and no code.
Google put three new things into its AI plans on September 9. Sheets Canvas builds a live mini-app on top of any sheet. Google Pics is a proper image editor. And you can talk to Gmail, Docs and Keep out loud. All three are on Google AI Pro ($19.99 a month) and Ultra, and the voice bits in Gmail and Keep are on the $4.99 AI Plus too.
If you're a college student, one year of AI Pro is free until December 31. Claim that before you read the rest.
Sheets Canvas (try this first)
Open any Google Sheet. Ask Gemini in the side panel, then "Create canvas". Describe what you want the data to become.
Google's own examples: an assignment list becomes a study tracker, an RSVP list becomes a drag-and-drop seating chart. The bit that matters is that the canvas stays wired to the sheet. Change a cell, the app changes. Drag something in the app, the sheet updates.
So the business version: your client list becomes a pipeline board. Your stock sheet becomes a screen you can hand to somebody who'd never open a spreadsheet. Your content calendar becomes a week view with drag-to-reschedule.
Create a canvas from this sheet: a [pipeline board / stock screen / week planner]. Group rows by the "[column]" column. Show [two or three columns] on each card. Let me drag a card between groups and write the new group back to the sheet. Keep it to one screen, no extra features."No extra features" is the most important line in that prompt. Left alone it builds a dashboard with six charts nobody asked for. Over-engineering is a model habit as much as a human one.
Global, English only for now, Pro and Ultra.
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Right. Back to it.
Google Pics
A standalone image tool at pics.new, built on Nano Banana, and it sits inside Slides and Docs (Drive next). Two things it does that the old Gemini image button didn't: it edits the text inside an image and keeps the design, and it selects one object and changes only that. Batch generation from one prompt too, so ten versions of a post graphic in one go.
Rolling out over the next few weeks on Pro and Ultra. This is Google's answer to ChatGPT's Sketch, and for anyone who lives in Slides I'd say it's the better one.
Talking to Gmail, Docs and Keep
Gmail Live: ask your inbox a question out loud ("what did the accountant say about the deadline?") and get the answer, not ten search results. Keep Live turns a rambling voice note into a list. Docs Live co-writes while you talk, pulling context from Gmail and Drive.
Gmail and Keep on every paid plan, Docs on Pro and Ultra. Voice rolled out from the week of September 3.
I'd use Gmail Live daily and Docs Live never. Talking a document into existence sounds great until you read it back.
Make it stick
The canvas only works when the sheet is clean. One header row, one row per thing, no merged cells, no notes typed into the data. Ten minutes tidying the sheet once, and every canvas after that builds first time.
That's one spreadsheet nobody has to be taught to read. An owner's business has ten of those, and a person who needs each one.
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Quick one.
What's the ugliest spreadsheet in your business? Hit reply and I'll tell you what the canvas should be.
Talk soon,
Zephyr
