Gemini
Updated Sep 28, 2026
Gemini is Google's AI assistant, and its conversations sit inside Google Takeout under My Activity, well away from the Gems you built to customise it. They are in two different places, which catches people out. There is no export request of its own: it arrives as part of a wider Google archive, so you get it whenever Takeout finishes rather than before.
What you'll get
Before you start
- Go to takeout.google.com and sign in with the Google account that actually holds the Gemini history. People with a work and a personal account pick the wrong one and get an archive with nothing in it.
- Click Deselect all before you touch anything. Takeout ships with roughly eighty categories already ticked, and My Activity at the top level is enormous.
- Decide whether you want the chats only or the Gems as well. Both are one checkbox each, and most people only need the first.
How to download
- Tick the box next to My Activity.
- Click the "All activity data included" link that appears under it.
- In the pop-up that opens, click Deselect all, then tick only Gemini Apps and click OK.
- Go back up the page and tick the separate Gemini box if you want your Gems. It is a different entry and it is easy to walk past.
- Click Next step, then pick your delivery method, the file type and the size. Email a link is the easiest and it costs nothing.
- Create the export. Google emails the link when it is ready, and the link itself expires, so download it when it arrives rather than when you remember.
Pro tip
The reason people download this and find an empty folder is that they found the Gemini checkbox, which is genuinely labelled just "Gemini", and assumed that was the chats. It is not. That one is your Gems. The conversation history is filed under My Activity, and selecting the top-level box grabs every Google service you have ever used, so the deselect inside the pop-up is not optional if you want a file you can open.
After the download
- The chats come out as JSON under a Gemini Apps folder inside the ZIP. There is no readable HTML version, which is the standing complaint about this export, and a converter is the only way to read it as prose.
- The formats screen is worth using. Takeout defaults to HTML for some activity records, and Gemini history in JSON is the one you can actually do something with.
- Files you uploaded into a conversation do come out, and generated images come out as image files. This is more generous than the equivalent ChatGPT export.
- Gemini Apps Activity is a single setting controlling both whether chats are saved and whether Google may train on them. Turning it off stops future collection and does nothing about what is already there, so export first and then change it if that is what you were after.
- You can clear the log itself at myactivity.google.com, and it is a separate action from deleting the archive. Deleting the archive does not delete the activity, which catches a lot of people out.
- Store the archive in ProtonDrive or pCloud for an off-site backup