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Google marked its February 2026 Gemini chat-history incident resolved for all affected users on February 22 at 12:08 PST. An internal job had deleted valid conversation metadata, hiding saved chats from the sidebar in Gemini Web and the mobile apps. Google said it restored the data from appropriate backups.
What happened to Gemini chat history
Beginning February 18, 2026 at 08:30 PST, some users saw an empty Gemini conversation sidebar, or received no results when listing or searching existing chats. Google said new conversations could still be created and used normally.
The problem was a visibility failure rather than evidence that every conversation’s text had been erased. Google’s incident record says an internal background job deleted valid conversation metadata. Because that metadata drives the saved-conversation list, affected chats disappeared from side navigation.
“Our engineering team has identified a background process that was causing the missing user conversation metadata and has successfully stopped the process to prevent further impact.”
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Google engineering team, Workspace Status Dashboard incident update
How users could access hidden conversations during the incident
Google’s incident-era workaround was to use Gemini Apps Activity, where requests and responses remained accessible while the sidebar was affected. These steps describe the documented workaround at the time; they are not a guarantee that Activity can recover chats a user intentionally deleted or that are unavailable for another reason.
On the web
- Open Gemini and select Menu in the top-left corner.
- Choose Settings & Help, then Activity.
- Alternatively, open myactivity.google.com/product/gemini.
- Review the listed Gemini requests and responses to find the conversation content you need.
On mobile
- Open the Gemini app and tap your profile menu in the top-right corner.
- Select Gemini Apps Activity.
- Browse the available requests and responses.
Google’s incident timeline and resolution
| Date and time | Google’s update |
|---|---|
| February 18, 2026, 08:30 PST | Incident began; saved conversations could disappear from Gemini Web and mobile-app sidebars. |
| February 19, 2026 | Google identified and stopped the internal process causing missing metadata. Engineers were working on restoration, with no estimated completion time announced then. |
| February 22, 2026, 12:08 PST | Google marked the issue resolved for all affected users and said it restored the data from appropriate backups. |
Google did not publish a count or percentage of affected users in the incident record, so the scope cannot be quantified from the official update.
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Gemini Apps Activity is also a user-controlled history and privacy surface. Google lets users review or delete activity and change the auto-delete period. Those controls are separate from the February metadata incident.
| Situation | What it means |
|---|---|
| February 2026 incident | Google said an internal metadata failure hid conversations from navigation while requests and responses remained available in Activity; Google restored affected data from backups. |
| User activity management | A user, administrator, retention rule or auto-delete setting may remove activity or limit how long it is kept. The incident workaround cannot reverse a separate deletion or retention event. |
Google has also described controls for reviewing, deleting and choosing how long to keep chat history in its product documentation. Check your current Gemini Apps Activity settings if a conversation remains unavailable after the service incident was resolved.
What to do if a chat is still missing
- Confirm that you are signed in to the Google Account that created the conversation.
- Check Gemini’s conversation list and the Gemini Activity page.
- Review auto-delete and other activity settings before assuming a service failure.
- If the conversation was intentionally deleted or removed by a retention policy, treat it as a data-management issue rather than the February incident.
- For a new, unrelated outage, consult Google’s current Workspace Status Dashboard for an official status update.
Bottom line
The February 2026 disappearance of Gemini chats was caused by Google’s server-side conversation-metadata failure, not a local computer problem. Google stopped the process, provided Activity as a temporary way to view requests and responses, restored the affected data from backups, and declared the incident resolved for all affected users on February 22, 2026.
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