If Gemini just stalled, froze on a blank response, or refused to load, you are in the right place. The good news is that most problems with Gemini are quick to diagnose, and a lot of them come down to something small on your side rather than a major failure. Below is a calm, practical walkthrough to help you work out what is wrong and get back up and running.
Common reasons Gemini stops working
“Gemini” covers several Google products, and they do not share one status. Knowing which surface you are on explains most problems, because an incident on a developer surface does not take the consumer app down.
- The consumer app versus Workspace. The Gemini app at gemini.google.com signs in with your personal Google account. Gemini in Workspace is controlled by your organisation’s Workspace administrator and is reported on the Google Workspace Status Dashboard, so a work account can be affected while a personal one is not.
- Google AI Studio and Vertex AI are developer surfaces. AI Studio (aistudio.google.com) and Vertex AI on Google Cloud have their own status. An incident there affects developers building on the models, not the consumer Gemini app.
- Account and availability restrictions. A “not available” message can come from your account type, an age setting or the country you are in rather than an outage. Signing in with a different eligible account is a quick way to tell them apart.
- Your Google session. Because Gemini uses your Google sign-in, an expired session or a browser blocking Google cookies can break it while Google’s own services are healthy.
How to fix Gemini when it is not working
Work through these steps in order. Most people are back to normal within the first few.
- Hard refresh the page. Reload Gemini fully (hold Shift while clicking reload, or press Ctrl/Cmd plus Shift plus R). This clears a stuck page state without touching your settings.
- Open a private or incognito window. This loads Gemini with no cached data and no extensions, which quickly tells you whether the problem is your normal browser setup.
- Sign out and back in. Log out of your account, then sign in again to refresh an expired or broken session.
- Clear your cache and cookies. If a private window worked but your normal window still fails, clearing stored data for the site usually fixes it.
- Switch networks. Move from Wi-Fi to mobile data, or the other way around. If Gemini works on one network but not the other, the issue is your connection or local network.
- Disable extensions and your VPN. Turn off ad blockers, privacy add-ons, and any VPN or proxy, then reload. Re-enable them one at a time to find the one causing trouble.
- Wait out rate limits. If you are being told to slow down or you have hit a usage cap, take a short break and try again later. These limits reset on their own.
- Update or restart the app. On mobile, make sure the app is current, then close and reopen it. A full restart of your device can also clear lingering glitches.
Is Gemini down, or is it just you?
Telling the difference saves a lot of frustration. The fastest approach is to combine a few quick checks. Start with this page: the live verdict and the recent reports above give you a real-time read on whether others are seeing problems too. If our check shows Gemini is reachable but it still fails for you, the cause is almost certainly local.
From there, two tests narrow it down. Open Gemini in a private window to rule out your cache and extensions, and try a different network (such as mobile data instead of Wi-Fi) to rule out your connection. If it works in either of those, the problem is on your side and the steps above will sort it. If it fails everywhere, including for other people, it is likely a wider issue and the best move is to wait. For a calm, step by step plan you can follow during any outage, see our guide on what to do when an AI tool is down.
How we check Gemini
Google publishes official incident information for Gemini through the Google Workspace Status Dashboard, while Google AI Studio and Vertex AI have separate developer-service status sources on the Google Cloud status page. We report these surfaces separately because one can be affected while the others remain operational, and an AI Studio or Vertex incident never marks the consumer Gemini app as down by itself. For the consumer app we run our own independent reachability check against the service. If it returns any response at all, including a sign-in screen or a security page, we treat it as reachable, because that means the service is answering requests. We are honest about the limits of this: a reachable service can still be slow or partly broken for some users, which is why the reports above from real people matter too. You can read more about our approach on our methodology page.
Alternatives to Gemini during an outage
If Gemini is genuinely down and you need to keep working, a few other assistants can usually pick up the slack. It is worth keeping one of these handy so a single outage does not stop you completely.
- ChatGPT is a strong general-purpose option for writing, brainstorming, and answering questions.
- Claude handles long documents and careful, detailed reasoning well.
- Copilot is convenient if you want an assistant tied into everyday tools and search.
Each of these has its own status page on our site, so if your first choice is also struggling you can check the others before switching. Once Gemini is reachable again, your usual workflow should pick up right where you left off.
Where Gemini Tends to Fail
Gemini works through its web interface and mobile app, and it requires a Google account to sign in, which ties its availability to Google’s broader account and authentication systems. When it has trouble you will often see a generic “something went wrong” message, responses that do not appear, or Workspace features like drafting in Gmail and summarizing in Docs that stop responding while the standalone chat still works. Because Gemini leans on Google sign-in, an account or cookie problem can look like an outage when the service itself is healthy.
Developers should note that the Gemini app is a different product from the Gemini API and Google AI Studio. Those developer tools have their own availability, so an API hiccup does not necessarily affect the consumer app. Regional availability also matters: some features and the app as a whole are limited in certain countries, so an apparent outage can actually be a location or account-type restriction.