Google systematically erases location-based reminders across three product shifts
From Assistant to Gemini, Google has repeatedly stripped away the ability to trigger alerts based on GPS coordinates.
Google has systematically removed location-based reminders from its ecosystem across three separate product iterations, leaving users without a native way to trigger alerts based on their physical location. The removal of this utility marks the end of a feature that once allowed users to receive notifications upon arriving at or leaving specific GPS coordinates.
The erosion began in 2022 when Google sunset native location-based reminders within Google Assistant. According to reports from Ars Technica and Android Police, the company did not issue a major announcement, instead opting for a quiet update to a support page to notify users of the change. While the Assistant version vanished, the functionality survived for a time within Google Keep. However, that lifeline ended in October 2025 when Google migrated Keep reminders to Google Tasks, a transition that stripped away the remaining location-based capabilities. The final blow arrived in September 2026 with the transition to the Gemini AI assistant, which lacks a native replacement for the feature.
A legacy of mobile utility
Location-based reminders were once a cornerstone of early mobile productivity. The concept of triggering a task—such as being reminded to buy eggs upon arriving at a grocery store—was popularized by early services like Foursquare and Google's own Latitude in 2009. Google later integrated this functionality into Google Keep around 2013 and expanded it into Google Assistant in 2018. For many, the feature was indispensable; Nimrod Aldea of Android Police described it as one of the only phone features that "actually understood how my brain works."
The cost of platform migration
The repeated removal of this tool highlights a recurring tension in Google's product strategy. The company frequently sunsets niche, high-utility features in favor of broader platform migrations. In this instance, the shift toward a centralized task management system in Google Tasks and the overarching pivot to Gemini AI took precedence over maintaining specific functional utilities. For power users, these migrations often result in a net loss of capability, as the new platforms prioritize general AI capabilities over specialized local triggers.
What remains
With the full deployment of Gemini as the primary assistant, there is currently no native Google replacement for location-aware alerting. Users seeking this functionality must now rely on third-party applications or alternative ecosystems. It remains unconfirmed whether Google intends to re-introduce these capabilities into Gemini's AI framework or if the company has permanently moved away from GPS-triggered reminders in favor of time-based or LLM-driven scheduling.