A Sheets canvas, the Gemini-made dashboard or tracker that sits on top of a Google spreadsheet, can now be shared on its own. Google has added a publish option that hands people a working copy of the mini-app while keeping the underlying sheet out of reach.
Viewers can filter, click and browse, but they get no way into the rows of data. The link also has an audience setting independent of the spreadsheet, so an organisation-wide canvas does not require widening who can open the file.
Per Google’s Workspace Updates post, you need edit rights on the canvas to publish it. On the web version of Sheets, the toolbar icon on the canvas tab opens a “Publish canvas” entry. Mobile apps are left out for now.
Publishers choose between a live version and a snapshot. Live means viewers always see the latest figures from the sheet; a snapshot is frozen at the moment it goes out. The same icon copies the link, changes the audience or takes the page down again.
Google pictures a filterable conference schedule for hundreds of attendees, a milestone timeline for stakeholders who should not edit the tracker, and a course calendar for staff. In all three the people running the data keep the sheet to themselves.
No new admin control comes with this. A canvas follows the Publish to the web capability that already exists in Workspace, which means each organisation’s Drive sharing rules on web publishing decide whether staff can use it.
Rollout is gradual. Domains on Rapid Release can see it up to 15 days after 11 November, and Scheduled Release domains begin on 2 December. Google lists Business Standard and Plus, Enterprise Standard and Plus, Google AI Pro and Ultra, the Google AI Pro for Education add-on and the AI Expanded Access add-on.
The canvas feature itself came out earlier this year. Google’s launch post explains that you choose “Create canvas” in the Ask Gemini side panel, describe the layout you want, and the result stays in step with the sheet. Google also warns that each user has a usage allowance for building and changing canvases.
At launch Google showed the feature with a student’s assignment tracker, a fantasy-sports roster dashboard and a wedding seating chart that guests can be dragged onto. English-language access for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers is worldwide, and the new publish link rides on the same plans.
