Google Updates: February 2026 Edition
Google Updates: February 2026 Edition
It’s time once again for an entry in our long-running series: Google Updates. As one of our key services, Google Workspace apps keep Miami running in a real way—and when Google makes adjustments to its service, we make sure Miami users stay informed of these changes.
We have a bevy of updates for the Miami community, each targeting various audiences. Read on to see if any of these things impact you!
Google adding Gemini capabilities to Workspace apps
Google is integrating Gemini into Google Docs, Slides, and Forms for Miami faculty and staff. This change will take effect very soon, and in fact, some users may already have access to these tools.
- Service: Google Workspace apps
- Impacted: Faculty and staff
- Timeline: February 2026
With a Miami account, faculty and staff already have access to Gemini capabilities; however, this new integration with Docs, Slides, and Forms makes it even easier to harness the power of the popular LLM to streamline work and create efficiencies directly in their documents.
Read more about this in the IT News article.
Changes coming to Google Groups settings
Some changes are coming to how Google Groups are classified (e.g., internal versus external) and some stricter enforcement of those classifications.
- Service: Google Groups
- Impacted: Groups that currently have the “Allow members outside your organization” setting disabled but have external members
- Timeline: May 2026
Beginning in May, existing Google Groups that have external members but don’t check the setting to “Allow members outside your organization” will be given a new classification. The distinction here is between internal groups (which consist of people with Miami email addresses) and external groups (which consist of both Miami address holders and folks with an email address from another provider or institution).
These groups that contain external users will be reclassified as external. The groups will also be configured such that only Google admins can add external users (preventing end users from doing so). If you need to add external users, please contact IT Help.
Google Drive “limited access” permissions enhancements
Documents that have stricter permissions than their parent folders will now retain their permission configuration instead of inheriting permissions when changes are made to the parent folders.
- Service: Google Drive
- Impacted: Folks who have shared a document with a more limited audience than the document’s parent folder
- Timeline: March 2026
When you share something within a folder, that document normally would inherit the permissions of the parent folder. However, a new “limited access” capability will allow users to share documents within parent folders without inheriting all permissions.
When Google makes this change in March, they will apply the “limited access” setting to existing folders that contain items with different levels of access than the parent folder. There will be no change to who can see or access the item itself—just to the settings of the parent folder.