Gemini's controls live in Gemini Apps Activity in your Google Account. You can pause activity saving, set auto delete to 3, 18, or 36 months, and delete individual conversations. Human reviewers can read selected conversations, so Google advises against entering confidential information.
Short answer
Gemini's controls live in Gemini Apps Activity in your Google Account. You can pause activity saving, set auto delete to 3, 18, or 36 months, and delete individual conversations. Human reviewers can read selected conversations, so Google advises against entering confidential information.
Step by step
Open Gemini Apps Activity: Go to myactivity.google.com and choose Gemini Apps, or open Activity from the Gemini sidebar.
Choose whether to save activity: Turning it off stops new conversations being saved to your Google Account. Existing entries remain until deleted.
Set auto delete: Pick 3, 18, or 36 months. Gemini is unusual in offering automatic expiry at all, and 3 months is a sensible default.
Delete existing history: Delete by date range, or clear everything. Reviewed conversations can persist separately for up to three years.
Export first with Takeout: takeout.google.com, select My Activity restricted to Gemini Apps, and download the archive before deleting anything.
Gemini's privacy model is Google's, which means the controls are more granular than the competition and buried further away from the product.
Where everything lives
| Control | Location |
|---|---|
| Save activity on or off | Gemini Apps Activity in your Google Account |
| Auto delete after 3, 18, or 36 months | Same panel |
| Delete a single conversation | Gemini sidebar, three dot menu |
| Bulk delete by date | myactivity.google.com |
| Export | Google Takeout, My Activity, Gemini Apps |
Auto delete is the standout feature
No other major assistant offers automatic expiry on consumer accounts. If you set 3 months, conversations older than that are removed without you doing anything. For anyone who wants a low retention footprint by default, this is the strongest control available anywhere in the category.
The catch is that it deletes on schedule regardless of whether you wanted to keep something. Auto delete plus no export is how people lose work.
Human review, and the three year figure
Google states that a subset of conversations is reviewed by trained reviewers to improve the service, and that reviewed conversations can be retained for up to three years, disconnected from your account. Crucially, those reviewed copies are not removed when you delete the conversation or when auto delete fires.
This is why Google's own guidance says not to enter anything confidential into Gemini. It is unusually direct advice and it should be taken literally.
Turning activity off
Pausing Gemini Apps Activity stops new conversations being written to your account. Gemini still processes what you send, and Google still keeps conversations for a short period for service operation and abuse review. Pausing also means you lose your history in the interface, which many people find makes the product substantially less useful.
Export before any of this
Google Takeout is the export route: choose My Activity, restrict it to Gemini Apps, and pick JSON or HTML. The archive arrives as a ZIP by email link.
Takeout's Gemini output is awkward. It is an activity log rather than a conversation document, so prompts and responses come out as a flat chronological stream mixed with metadata. ChatExports parses that format specifically and rebuilds it into per conversation PDF, Markdown, DOCX, or CSV files, running locally in your browser.
The combination worth adopting: auto delete at 3 months, plus a quarterly Takeout export converted into your own archive. Low retention with Google, complete history with you.
Frequently asked questions
Does turning off Gemini Apps Activity delete my existing history?
No. It only stops new conversations being saved. Delete existing entries separately from My Activity.
Can Google employees read my Gemini conversations?
Trained reviewers see a subset of conversations, retained for up to three years disconnected from your account. Google advises against entering confidential information.
Does auto delete remove reviewed conversations?
No. Copies retained for human review are held separately and are not affected by auto delete or manual deletion.
How do I export Gemini conversations?
Use Google Takeout, select My Activity limited to Gemini Apps, then convert the resulting archive into readable documents.