When you connect Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive to Claude, you can search emails, manage your calendar, and work with documents without leaving the conversation. Anthropic's official Google Workspace connectors are available to all users at no extra cost (on Team and Enterprise, an admin must enable them first). This guide covers how to connect, what each service can do, how approvals and citations work, and how to fix it when the connection fails.
What you connect and what it can do
There are three Google Workspace connectors (per official docs).
Gmail
- Search and read emails with natural language
- Draft emails with proper context — but Claude cannot send on your behalf (drafts only)
- Access email and attachment metadata (not attachment content)
- Organize with labels and threads
Google Calendar
- Search and review events and otherwise manage your calendar
Google Drive
- Search and retrieve Google Docs from your Drive
- View file permissions and list recent changes
- Save Claude-generated files directly to Drive (requires code execution and file creation to be enabled)
- Text content only — images in documents are not processed. (No xlsx-to-Sheets / pptx-to-Slides conversion or adding comments.)
How to connect (all users)
- Click the + button (or type
/) in the chat to open the menu. - Under Connectors, toggle Gmail, Calendar, and Drive on or off individually.
- Authenticate directly with your Google account (required before use).
- Or manage them under Customize → Connectors in settings.
Team / Enterprise: an Owner or Primary Owner must enable the connectors at the organization level before individual users can authenticate.
How it works — auto tool selection, approval, citations
Ask a question that needs Gmail, Calendar, or Drive and Claude decides which tools it needs on its own. Each action requires your explicit approval, and the answer includes citations showing which emails, events, or documents were used, with links to the originals. You can ask follow-ups to dig deeper.
Fine-tune permissions
Go to Customize → Connectors → the connector → Tool permissions and set categories like read-only vs write/delete to Always allow, Needs approval, or Blocked — e.g., "read Drive files but block creating or editing documents." Note: even if you allow a write action in Claude, nothing changes unless you also have that permission in Google (Claude never grants more access than the source system).
Good ways to use it
- "Summarize just the decisions from last week's client emails" (Gmail)
- "Check next week's meetings and tell me my free slots" (Calendar)
- "Find the 'API spec' doc in Drive and summarize the auth section" (Drive)
- "Save this summary as a new Google Doc in Drive" (Drive save, needs code execution)
When it won't connect (troubleshooting)
- Pop-up blocked: check whether the OAuth pop-up was blocked (try incognito, disable extensions).
- Wrong account: confirm you authenticated with the Google account that holds the files/mail.
- Expired token / changed access: toggle the connector off and on to re-authenticate.
- Team / Enterprise: confirm an admin enabled it at the org level.
- Shared projects: adding Drive files to project Files works only in private projects (disabled for shared projects).
Good to know
- Gmail is draft-only — Claude does not send mail for you.
- Drive is text-only (no images / some conversions). Attachment content is not accessible.
- Connectors act inside a conversation you start, with your approval.
- Review the access scope before connecting a sensitive account.
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