Google Bard is an incredibly useful tool. From coding and writing to brainstorming and analyzing data, there are several things you can do with Bard.

However, using Bard Extensions offers a multitude of new possibilities. Below, we explain what Bard Extensions are and how you can use them.

What Are Google Bard Extensions?

Bard Extensions integrate Bard with other Google apps to provide up-to-date and relevant information. When you enter a prompt requiring updated, accurate information, Bard itself retrieves the details using its extensions.

Currently, there are five extensions available in English Language only. These include extensions for Google Flights, Hotels, Maps, Workspace, and YouTube.

How to Enable Google Bard Extensions

All Extensions except Google Workspace are enabled by default. But since enabling Workspace extensions provides Bard access to your Gmail, Docs, and Drive, Google asks you to turn it on yourself, providing all the necessary permissions.

To enable Bard Extension for Workspace, click the jigsaw icon in the top-right, toggle on Google Workspace, and select Connect.

If you're worried about privacy, rest assured that Google won't use the information from your Workspace apps to improve Bard, show you ads, or reveal it to its human reviewers (or at least that's what they say).

How to Use Google Bard Extensions

Now that you know what Bard Extensions are and how to enable them, let's see the different ways you can use Bard Extensions.

First, you can find suitable flights for your trip using Google Flights. Just simply ask Bard to show you flights to your desired destination on the selected days. Bard then displays the details of available flights, including the airline, exact date and time, number of stops, flight duration as well as ticket prices.

Along with it, there's a link to Google Flights, so you can filter the flights further or find cheap flights with its price tracker.

Although Bard automatically uses Google Flights to fetch information, you can start the prompt with @flights to specifically instruct it to use the Flights extension.

Likewise, you can use the Hotels extension to find information about different hotels and see their pictures, brief descriptions, ratings, and prices. As Bard can use multiple Extensions together, you can find flights and hotels with a single prompt.

You can also discover the distance/traveling time between two places, get directions to your destination, or find nearby places, thanks to the Google Maps extension. Using these three extensions alone, you can get an instant AI-generated itinerary.

If finding the right YouTube videos is a challenge for you, you can get help from the Bard Extension for YouTube. Better still, you can use the image prompts to search for related videos.

And perhaps the most useful of all is the Workspace Extensions. If you hate digging into your inbox to find emails or reading the fluff that most emails contain, you can try the Workspace extension. This extension helps you find emails, summarize them, and even draft AI-generated replies.

If you've asked Bard to find emails, it'll display the subject line, recipients, and date. Once you've found the email you were looking for, you can click it to open it in Gmail.

Likewise, if you need to locate or summarize any Google Drive file or Google Docs documents, this extension can come in handy.

For instance, you can ask Bard to find the spreadsheet titled “expense tracker” in your Drive, and it'll show all the spreadsheets with that name, along with the file owner and date.

Make the Most Out of Google Bard With Extensions

Even without these extensions, Bard is indeed quite a handy tool. It can help you with dozens of daily little tasks—from browsing to writing and coding.

But with these extensions, Bard can also pull in real-time information from other Google apps and streamline your work. Best of all, you can access your emails and documents right within Bard itself.