800,000 preorders is a statement. And Google still decided not to ship the standalone AI Studio app for iOS and Android. Instead, the features move to where Google wants its users anyway: into the Gemini app.
What Google cut
AI Studio is Google’s playground for developers — the place where you test prompts, compare models, and quickly build small app prototypes. Since I/O 2026, more than 800,000 people had signed up for a mobile version. That standalone app is no longer coming. The app-building features are moving into the Gemini app on phone and desktop.
The good news for developers: the web-based AI Studio stays. Anyone working there loses nothing. But anyone who had hoped for a dedicated mobile client for prototyping now has to rebuild their workflow around Gemini.
My take
This decision is understandable and still a shame. Understandable, because no company wants to maintain two mobile AI apps in parallel — every extra app is a support channel, an update cycle, another place where users get lost. Bundling everything under Gemini is strategically clean. A shame, because a tool for developers has different needs than a consumer assistant. In a tidy chat app, I don’t want to bounce between “explain this to me” and “build me a prototype.” Anthropic is going the other direction with Claude right now, pulling chat and Cowork closer together — and there too, the question is where one surface ends and the other begins. In the end, what matters is whether the bundled app feels right for both audiences. The 800,000 would have liked to try for themselves.
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