Google is recasting Search as a surface, as Canvas arrives for users across the United States, offering you an experimental Gemini-driven space for notes, drafts, and creative idea shaping.
From the Search page, you open Canvas, keep it pinned, and track ideas alongside results. In the new AI Mode in Search, this dedicated side panel supports travel boards, study notes, lightweight coding, and other real-time drafting experiments, reflecting the wide US rollout in English today.
Canvas arrives in AI Mode across the US, opening a side workspace in Search
Across the United States, Google is bringing Canvas directly into AI Mode in Search for English-language users. A dedicated panel unfolds on the right side of the results page, transforming a standard query into a persistent workspace where drafts and ideas remain visible as you keep searching.
Earlier trials kept Canvas limited to a small corner of Search for curious testers. In its broader rollout, it graduates from a modest Google Labs experiment into a full workspace alongside chat, drawing on Google’s rich Knowledge Graph context so suggestions, sources, and follow-up prompts stay linked to the web.
From travel boards to draft pages and code : what Canvas can now generate
Canvas now stretches well beyond its travel origins, where Gemini turned destination queries into neatly organised boards of hotels, attractions, and dates. Within the same space, you can move from outlining journeys to shaping essays, then pivot straight into coding tasks that sit beside those notes.
Projects can start from research snippets, uploaded files, or a bare prompt, and Canvas keeps each version accessible as your ideas evolve. In that evolving board, Gemini can offer creative writing feedback, rough out an interactive tool prototype, generate shareable app code, or assemble a structured scholarship tracking dashboard for deadlines and requirements.
How to access Canvas and what it means for Gemini, NotebookLM, and rivals
Access begins in Google Search’s AI Mode, which appears for eligible users in the United States on desktop and mobile. From an AI answer, you can open Canvas in the side panel and keep that workspace pinned while refining queries and reviewing suggested sources together.
Within that panel, extra controls sit behind a compact toolbar. By expanding the plus button tool menu, you invite Gemini to transform the page, deepening Gemini app integration across services and nudging users toward areas where there is clear NotebookLM overlap and inevitable ChatGPT Canvas comparison among power users.
