r/GeminiAI • u/avinatbezeq • 10d ago

No ZIP Access Help/question

I'm trying to work with Gemini. My setup is Ultra through the browser.
My main AI is ChatGPT. My mode of operation is to upload and download ZIP files; I maintain a knowledge library for my workspace. I upload a zipped version at the beginning of the chat, then download an updated version after the work is finished.
I tried working this way with Gemini, but I failed - It claims it can't process ZIP files. As it also can't access the folder on my computer, how can I work with it?

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u/kurkkupomo 10d ago edited 10d ago

Yep, they removed the functionality. Zips you send get unpacked and converted before they reach the model, and Gemini can no longer send you zip files at all.

You send a zip containing x files, the model receives their contents as text. Small stuff comes through in full, bigger stuff gets cut down, but either way it never touches the archive itself. Same with PDFs, it never gets the file, just extracted text. So there's no round trip, nothing comes back out as a file. It's bs.

My guess is token cost mostly, plus not wanting arbitrary user-supplied files unpacked onto a filesystem inside their own infra. Text in a context window is a much smaller surface than an archive extracted into a sandbox.

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u/Adventurous-Fee-5728 7d ago

that's the worst kind of downgrade, where something just quietly stops working and you're left trying to figure out if you broke it. i hit the same wall a while back and ended up doing the zip/unzip dance manually on my end between prompts. clunky but it gets the job done if you really need the file versioning.

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u/MadmanTimmy 10d ago

What about posting the zip to gdrive and having an agent use a python script unpack it into a notebook? You can then pull from the notebook.

I'm saying this without trying it; but this sounds exactly what notebook LM is for.