1In one sentence
Know three things before you rely on Gemini: what Google keeps and who can see it, where the daily walls are, and how to check an answer in under a minute.
2New words
- Gemini Apps Activity — the list of your saved chats (Settings & help, then Activity). You can delete one chat, a date range, or everything.
- Human review — Google says a sample of chats may be read by trained reviewers to improve the product. Those samples are kept separately, for up to three years, even if you delete the chat. Do not paste passwords, card numbers or medical files.
- Hallucination — when the AI writes something that sounds right but is made up: a fake book, a wrong statistic, a law that does not exist.
- Limit reached — the message that your plan's allowance is used up. It refills in a few hours; it is not an error.
3Why you would want it
Gemini is tied to the Google account that holds your email and photos, so its privacy settings matter more than with a stand-alone tool. And because it answers with total confidence, the habit of checking is what separates people who get burned from people who get value.
4The checklist
- Does it matter if this is wrong? If yes, go to step 2. If no, move on.
- Ask: Which parts of this are you least sure about? Gemini is honest about this when asked directly.
- Ask for sources and click one. Does the page actually say that?
- For numbers, ask it to show the calculation, then redo one line by hand.
- For anything legal, medical, tax or safety related, treat the answer as a list of questions to ask a professional, not as the answer.
5Try it now
- Open Settings & help, then Activity. Delete one old chat to see how.
- Find the auto-delete setting (18 months by default) and choose the period you are comfortable with.
- In a new chat ask: Give me three academic studies about sourdough and digestion, with authors and years. Then ask: Search the web and confirm each of these exists. Compare.
- Start a Temporary chat from the New chat menu for something you do not want saved.
6What you will see
The Activity page listing your chats by date with a Delete button, and the auto-delete options. In the sourdough test, often one of the three "studies" cannot be found; that is a hallucination caught in one minute.
7Watch out
- Deleting a chat removes it from your account, but Google keeps already-reviewed samples. The only safe rule is not to type what you would not want a stranger to read.
- Free accounts hit the wall fastest on Pro answers, Deep Research and images. Do the big jobs in one sitting and the cheap chat afterwards.
8Go further
You now have the whole beginner's toolkit. Go back to Chapter 1.16, build one nine-block master prompt for the job you do most, save it as a Gem or Skill, and use it every day for a week. That habit is worth more than any single feature in this part.