Google Updates Recap: May 2025
Table of contents
Google AI
Introducing updates to sources for NotebookLM
Sources in NotebookLM now support the following features:
- Use the new “Discover sources” functionality to find related sources from the web based on the topic you’re interested in. You can then add these sources to your notebooks, expanding your research and building more comprehensive notebooks.
- Use multimodal PDFs as sources with NotebookLM’s enhanced capability to understand all the content within PDFs, which includes text, images and graphs.
Warning: This AI feature must not be used with any sensitive data.
Feature Availability: This feature is now available.
Use NotebookLM to generate Audio Overviews more than 50 languages
Audio Overviews in NotebookLM are lively “deep dive” discussions between two AI hosts who summarize key topics in your sources. These turn documents, slides, charts and more into engaging discussions with one click and are especially useful for learning on-the-go. Today, we’re excited to expand Audio Overviews to over 50 languages in Beta.
For more information about Audio Overviews in NotebookLM, and to see the full list of languages, visit: Audio Overviews – NotebookLM Help.
Warning: This AI feature must not be used with any sensitive data.
Feature Availability: This feature is now available.
Google Docs
Google Docs code blocks now available in additional programming languages
Code blocks in Google Docs now supports additional programming languages. The list of supported languages includes:
- C#
- Go
- Kotlin
- PHP
- Rust
- TypeScript
- HTML
- CSS
- XML
- JSON
- Protobuf
- Textproto
- SQL
- Bash/Shell
To get started with code block smart chips, go to Insert menu → Building blocks → Code blocks → choose your programming language, or type @ in the document → Code blocks → choose your programming language. For more information, visit: Insert building blocks in Google Docs.
Feature Availability: This feature is now available.
Google Sheets
Easily add multiple people chips in a Google Sheets cell
You can now easily insert and convert cells with multiple people mentioned into people chips. While a cell containing multiple email addresses is selected, you can navigate to the Format menu → Smart chips → Click on the preferred format for the chips.
For more information about inserting smart chips, visit: Insert smart chips in your Google Sheets – Google Docs Editors Help.
Feature Availability: This feature is now available.
Google Slides
New sidebar with design elements in Google Slides makes building presentations easier
A new, intuitive sidebar has been added to Google Slides. This enables creators to access the following new features:
- Building blocks: A new library of pre-formatted pieces of content, such as agendas, quotes or key statistics, that help you create professional, visual presentations much quicker. These blocks, which function similarly to building blocks in Docs, are composed of native Slides elements and can be de-grouped and customized once inserted into your slide.
- Stock Images: Easily access millions of high-quality stock images in our expanded library, web images, stickers, and GIFs to bring additional visual elements into your presentation.
You’ll also be able to access the following existing features from the sidebar:
- Templates: Modern, professionally-designed templates that make getting started on a new presentation much easier.
- Speaker spotlight: Presenters can insert their video feed directly into their Slides content.
- Slides recordings: Users can easily record themselves presenting, and then share the presentation with others to view when it works for them.
This update provides you with a consistent location for insertion-related actions and saves you time by giving you design tools and inspiration to build beautiful presentations, without ever leaving Google Slides.
For more information, visit: Use a Template or change the theme, background, or layout in Google Slides – Google Docs Editors Help.
Feature Availability: This feature is now available.
Categories Google Docs, Google Drive & Docs Editors, Google Feature Updates and Changes, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Workspace News, Other Google Feature News