Gemini Ships Six Updates: Robotics, Chrome Skills, and More
What shipped
Google shipped a week-in-review bundle on April 17, 2026: Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6, Chrome Skills for saving reusable prompts, Google AI Studio Design previews and tab-completion, and additional context on Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS multi-speaker support ...
Smarter Work
Chrome Skills lets you build a personal library of proven prompts and fire them in any browser tab with one click — turning the prompt you rewrote seven times last week into a button. Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 adds physical-world reasoning, pushing Gemini's utility beyond the screen into hardware and automation pipelines.
How a team used this
Dani runs social media for a mid-size e-commerce brand. Every Monday she builds three content variants using the same core Gemini prompt — tweaked slightly, copy-pasted every time. After enabling Chrome Skills, she saves that prompt once, pins it to her browser, and by Wednesday it's already saved her 40 minutes. She uses the time she got back to test Nano Banana 2 with Google Photos, generating a product lifestyle image that actually features her dog. Her manager thinks she hired a photographer.