Google's AI Mode Can Now Actually Do Stuff, Not Just Talk About It

Starting Thursday, you can link a handful of your regular apps right now, that's Instacart, Canva, and YouTube, directly into AI Mode, Google's conversational search thing. Instead of AI Mode just giving you information and leaving you to go actually act on it somewhere else, it can now reach into those connected apps and get things done on your behalf.

What this actually looks like in practice

The examples Google's giving make it pretty clear what they're going for. Say you're planning a barbecue and you use AI Mode to put together a grocery list. Normally that list would just sit there as text you'd have to manually copy over somewhere. Now, if you've connected Instacart, AI Mode can drop those ingredients straight into your Instacart cart, ready to check out.

Same idea with Canva, if you're working on something like a flyer and need design ideas, you can ask AI Mode to pull up a set of Canva templates right there. Or if you're curating a party playlist, you can have AI Mode build it out and save it straight to YouTube Music instead of you manually recreating the list on YouTube yourself afterward.

Basically, the pattern is: AI Mode figures out what you need, then instead of stopping at "here's what I'd suggest," it hands that directly to the actual app where you'd use it.

Why Google's doing this now

This isn't really coming out of nowhere. It's a pretty clear response to what OpenAI and Anthropic have already been building ChatGPT already supports app integrations like DoorDash, Spotify, and Uber, and Claude has its own connectors setup doing something similar. Google's basically catching up to a feature category its competitors have already started normalizing.

There's also an obvious incentive for Google here beyond just keeping pace: the more tasks AI Mode can actually complete instead of just answering questions about, the more reason people have to stick around and use it regularly instead of treating it as a one-off search tool. Shopping and planning are exactly the kind of frequent, habitual tasks Google wants baked into its AI experience.

It's part of a bigger buildout

This app-linking feature isn't happening in isolation it's really just the search-side version of something Google already rolled out for the main Gemini app earlier this year at I/O, which lets people connect third-party apps like Canva, OpenTable, Spark, and Instacart to get tasks done faster there too.

And AI Mode itself has been getting steadily more capable since it first launched in early 2025. Just recently, Google added the ability to check whether something you need is actually in stock at a nearby store. Before that, they added a side-by-side web browsing mode so you can compare things and ask follow-ups without losing your original search context. And earlier this year, Google rolled out something called "Personal Intelligence," which lets AI Mode tap into your Gmail and Google Photos to give you more personalized answers based on your actual life instead of generic responses.

Put together, all of this points toward the same direction: Google slowly turning AI Mode from a smarter search bar into something that can actually reach into your accounts, your apps, and your personal data to just handle things for you.

What's next

Right now this is limited to users in the U.S., and only those three apps, Instacart, Canva, YouTube are supported at launch. Google says it's working with more partners and plans to add support for additional apps soon, so expect this list to grow the same way the Gemini app's connected apps list has been expanding.