Adobe plans Acrobat editing shortcuts in Gmail and Google Drive

Adobe Acrobat is set to appear as an editing option in Gmail and Google Drive. Adobe and Google announced the plan at Adobe MAX on November 10. The companies will recommend Acrobat in file previews across both services, including through an “Edit with” menu. Adobe also plans to add Google’s Gemini models to the AI features in Acrobat.

Once the integration arrives, someone previewing a PDF attachment in Gmail or a file in Drive will be able to go from that preview into Acrobat. The announcement gave no rollout date, initial markets or subscription requirements for the new entry point.

The Drive add-on and Chrome extension already offer access

Adobe already offers an Acrobat add-on for Drive in Google Workspace Marketplace. The listing describes basic PDF tools including text search and annotations. It puts exporting a PDF to other file formats and merging documents among the premium tools.

Adobe also documents a Chrome extension that can open PDFs from Gmail and Drive automatically in Acrobat. The extension has separate controls for each service, so someone can keep the default Gmail viewer while using Acrobat for PDFs opened from Drive. The November announcement places an Acrobat option in the Workspace preview itself. Adobe and Google did not say whether the new menu will require either installation.

Organizations can control access to third-party apps that use the Drive API. Google’s current administrator documentation says apps installed by an administrator are exempt from the setting that can block apps users have added on their own. Administrators can apply the setting across an organization or to individual organizational units or groups. The companies gave no details on the admin controls for the new preview integration.

Gemini will join the models behind Acrobat’s AI features

The planned addition of Google’s models concerns features inside Acrobat. In January, Adobe announced a chat interface in Acrobat Studio for tasks such as extracting PDF pages and converting files. In September it added ways to produce summary slides or audio summaries from a group of documents. The November agreement calls for Google models to help power document tools like these. It does not identify which Gemini models will handle particular actions.

Adobe’s desktop help describes how chat-based editing works today. The assistant chooses a tool based on a user’s instruction. When replacing text that appears in several places, it can show a preview and ask for confirmation before applying the edit. The options vary by plan. Reader supports searching for text through chat, while asking the assistant to rearrange pages is available in Pro and Studio. The help page limits requests that use multiple tools or depend on the document’s content or structure to individual Pro and Studio plans. Those are the current conditions in the desktop app.

Acrobat tools are also planned for Gemini chats

Adobe and Google plan to add Acrobat to the Adobe connectors in Gemini and Gemini Enterprise. That gives the companies a second place to put PDF tools, inside a conversation with Gemini. The partnership announcement does not specify the PDF commands that connector users will get or how it will handle files.

Adobe’s documentation for the current Gemini connector lists creative tasks such as editing an image, adapting a design and finding assets in Creative Cloud. It requires a Gemini account and an Adobe account, and currently lists English as its supported language. The partnership announcement leaves the first eligible Gemini accounts for the planned Acrobat tools unspecified.