Connecting your accounts

This page describes what Pepper can connect to. It isn't a record of what you've already connected — for that, open Settings → Accounts, where each account's card shows exactly what it can currently reach.

Pepper is useful because it can see the things it's helping you with — but it starts out able to see nothing. Every connection below is optional, off until you turn it on, and revocable in one click. Signing in and connecting services are deliberately separate steps, so what Pepper can reach is always a decision you made rather than a side effect of logging in.

The short version of each one: Gmail so it can tell you what's waiting and write the replies; Calendar so "what does my day look like" has an answer and "move my 2pm" has somewhere to go; Contacts so a name resolves to the right person; Drive (read-only) so you can ask about a document instead of opening it.

Signing in

1. On the Pepper site, click Log in with Google.
2. Approve Pepper to see your basic Google profile (name, email, picture). This is just sign-in — it does not grant calendar or email access.
3. You land in Settings, where you can set your time zone and preferences.

You can also sign in with Apple instead of Google — Pepper only sees the basic profile Apple shares (and, if you choose Hide My Email, a private relay address), never your calendar or mail. Settings → Sign-in methods lists every way you can get back into your account and lets you add or remove one; you always have to keep at least one.

Pepper only accepts a Google account whose email address Google itself has verified. If Google hasn't verified it, signing in with that account — or connecting it under Settings → Accounts — is refused with a note saying so, and nothing from that Google account is saved. Verify the address with Google, or use a different account.

Signing out is under your profile menu — it ends your Pepper session but doesn't touch your Google account.

Connecting your Google account

When you set Pepper up, it shows you a screen listing everything below — Gmail, Calendar, Contacts and Drive — each with a one-line description of what Pepper would do with it, all ticked to start. Untick anything you'd rather keep to yourself; Google's own screen, next, shows exactly what you chose rather than the whole bundle. You can add the rest later, and Add account under Settings → Accounts offers the same screen whenever you connect a Google account from there.

You can also connect a service on its own at any time from Settings → Accounts, which is how you fill in something you skipped:

• Connect Calendar — Google asks you to approve access to your calendar. Connecting is enough to get going: Pepper starts with your main calendar included, so your schedule works straight away without a second setup step. You can widen or narrow that any time under Settings → Calendars — adding work, family or shared calendars, or leaving out ones you don't want counted. Pepper can read your schedule and, with your confirmation each time, add, move, or cancel events.
• Connect Gmail — Google asks you to approve reading and sending mail. Pepper can then search, read, draft replies, and — when you confirm — send on your behalf from your address. (Pepper can also email third parties from its own assistant address with you CC'd; see Email.)
• Connect Contacts — Google asks you to approve read access to your contacts and, for work/school accounts, your organization's directory. Once connected, Pepper can look up people you know — so when you say "email Sam" or "schedule with Priya," it can resolve the name to the right address instead of guessing.
• Connect Drive — Google asks you to approve read-only access to your Google Drive. Once connected, Pepper can find your files and folders, read the comment threads on them, and read what's inside your Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides — so "summarize the roadmap doc" or "what's the total in the budget sheet?" both work. That's all one connection; there's nothing extra to approve. It can't create, rename, move, delete, edit, or share anything in Drive, and it can't change who has access to a file. See Other lookups.

Whichever way you connect, Google shows you exactly what you're granting before you approve it.

Turning individual things on and off

Granting something to Pepper and letting Pepper use it are two different decisions, and Settings → Accounts keeps them apart. Open an account's card and you'll find an Access checklist — one tick per capability, like reading your mail, sending mail, reading your calendar, or adding and moving events. Untick one and press Save changes, and Pepper stops using it straight away, without disturbing anything else on that account.

Two things worth knowing:

• Switching something off does not cancel the permission at Google. It stops Pepper using it, which is usually what you want — and it means ticking it back on is instant, with no trip to Google. To withdraw the permission itself, use Revoke Google access in the account's menu.
• Ticking on something you never granted needs Google's approval. Those rows say so, and the button changes to Save and continue to Google. When you come back, only what you asked for gets switched on — approving something at Google doesn't quietly re-enable anything you'd previously turned off. Google's screen arrives with the card's own account already chosen; if you pick a different one there, nothing is granted to either account and you come back to a note saying so. Use Add account when you want to connect a different Google account.

If you've ended up with two Peppers

It happens for an ordinary reason: you signed up with a personal Google account, signed up again months later with a work one, and now there are two Peppers that each know half of you. There's a way back to one.

Use Add account in Settings → Accounts and pick the other Google account. If it already has a Pepper of its own, Pepper doesn't just refuse — it offers to fold that account into this one, and shows you exactly what folding it in would mean before anything happens.

A few things worth knowing before you press it:

• The account you're signed into is the one that stays. There's no picker, on purpose — a merge that could run either way is a merge that could run the wrong way, and undoing it would mean another merge. So sign in as the Pepper you want to keep, then add the other one.
• Nothing is copied or rebuilt. Your conversations, to-do items, artifacts, skills and booking pages come across as they are. A booking link somebody already has in their inbox keeps working, and a document keeps its history.
• Some settings disagree, and you answer those yourself. Where the two accounts hold different answers to something consequential — your time zone, the address Pepper writes to, what you've told it about yourself — the offer page asks, one question at a time, leading with what each choice actually changes. Answering them and merging is a single press. You can also talk it through with Pepper in chat if you'd rather, and chat is the only place to give an answer that's neither account's current value.
• Things you wrote are kept twice rather than thrown away. Scheduled tasks, skills and connected tool servers that exist on both come across alongside yours, with the incoming one labelled by the account it came from. A recurring task that quietly stopped happening is worse than one with an awkward name. Ordinary settings with a single right answer just take the surviving account's value, and anything to do with sharing resolves to the more private of the two.
• Lists that exist on both become one. Your to-do lists, booking pages, the apps you've archived from your launcher, and the rooms you've archived or muted are combined, so nothing from the other account goes missing from the app. If both accounts had a booking page with the same web address, the incoming one gets a numbered address (intro-2), and any link people already have still opens it.
• A setting only the other account had is simply yours now — Pepper takes it without asking, and tells you it did.
• The offer doesn't wait around. It's good for about an hour, because it's authorized by the Google screen you just came through. If it lapses, start again from Add account.
• You don't have to answer it in one sitting. While an offer is live it's listed at the top of Settings → Accounts, under Waiting on you, with the time it runs out — so closing the tab or reloading the page doesn't cost you the offer or anything you'd already answered.
• Declining changes nothing. Both accounts stay exactly as they were, and that Google account is simply not connected here.

Disconnecting

In Settings → Accounts, use Disconnect to remove a whole account, or Revoke Google access in its menu to withdraw the permissions while keeping the account signed in. Either way Pepper tells Google to cancel its access, not just its own copy, and it loses access immediately. Your data stays in Google — this only revokes Pepper's reach.

If it's a single capability you want gone rather than the whole account, use the Access checklist above instead.

Your last Google account. Normally Pepper won't let you disconnect the only Google account on your Pepper account, because signing in with Google is how you get back in — a phone number or an email address on file is somewhere Pepper can reach you, not a way to log in. There are two exceptions. If you've also set up Sign in with Apple, that's a real way back, so Disconnect is offered and you sign in with Apple afterwards. And if you hold a working API token (the kind pepper login uses — see The command-line app), that token can start a new web session, so it counts too. The same rule works the other way round: if that token is your only way in, Pepper won't let you revoke it while no Google or Apple sign-in is connected. Whichever you're removing, Pepper checks that something is left to sign in with.

Cutting off everything at once. If more than one Google account still has access, a Revoke Google access on all N accounts button appears at the foot of Accounts, so you don't have to work through each account's menu in turn and risk leaving the one that's still reading your mail. It does exactly what the per-account version does, on every account: Pepper loses Gmail, Calendar, Contacts and Drive everywhere. You can still sign in — this removes what Pepper can do, not how you log in — and you can reconnect any account afterwards. Pepper checks that the sweep actually finished and tells you if any account was left behind rather than reporting a clean result.

Reconnecting

Sometimes Pepper's access to a connected Google account stops working — you changed your Google password, revoked access from your Google security settings, or the account sat unused long enough that Google expired the connection.

You don't have to notice this by watching Pepper fail. When it happens, that account's card under Settings → Accounts shows a Needs reconnect badge with a Reconnect button right on it, and Pepper itself knows the account is unusable rather than promising to read a mailbox it can't reach. Cards also show when Pepper last confirmed the connection was working — an account that's never needed refreshing yet simply doesn't show that line.

You'll also hear about it where it bites, not just in Settings. If a connection has stopped working, your Calendar app says Pepper can no longer reach that account and points you at Settings, rather than "couldn't load it just now" — which would have you waiting for a retry that will never work. A calendar search says the same. When you have several accounts connected and only one of them has gone, the rest still show normally and the line names the one that's missing, so you don't lose a working agenda to a warning. And if you have a booking page (see Booking pages), Pepper flags it there too, because a page built on an account it can't read will stop offering times to the people you sent the link to.

To fix it, click Reconnect on the flagged card, or open any account's menu under Settings → Accounts and click Reconnect. Google walks you through the same approval screen and Pepper is working again — you don't have to disconnect first, and you keep every service you'd already connected on that account. Reconnect is also how an account picks up a new capability Pepper has added since you first connected (for example, if your calendar was connected as read-only before Pepper could add or move events).

Connecting GitHub (optional)

If you work in code, you can also connect GitHub — it's in the gallery under Settings → Connectors (see Connectors). Pepper can then summarize repo activity ("what shipped this week in pepper?"), file new issues for you, check the status of a specific PR or issue, and help triage an open-issue backlog. See GitHub for what you can ask once it's connected, and Skills for the GitHub-aware skills this unlocks. Pepper reads your repos, issues, and pull requests, and takes GitHub actions you explicitly ask it to — like filing an issue — but it doesn't go off and author code or merge PRs on its own initiative. It sees only the repositories you granted when installing the app — adjust the set any time at GitHub → Settings → Installations.

Multiple Google accounts

You can connect more than one Google account (for example, a personal and a work account) and give each a label. Pepper reads across all of them and tells you which account something came from. For actions, it uses the account you've marked as primary for that service.

Choosing your notification email

When Pepper sends you something on its own — a morning brief, a reminder, a scheduled task — it delivers to a single notification email. Under Settings → Notifications, the Notification email chooser lets you pick which of your connected Google addresses that is. Because Pepper only ever sends to an address you've signed in with, the chooser is limited to your connected accounts — there's no free-text field. Switching it takes effect on your next proactive email; replies to messages you send always come back on the same channel you used.

Choosing your profile picture

The picture next to your name defaults to the Google picture of whichever connected account you last signed in with. If you've connected more than one, Settings → Profile shows a picture for each one that has one, plus that default — pick any of them and it's the one Pepper shows everywhere, in chat and in a group's "who's here." An account only shows up here once Pepper has seen its picture, which happens the next time you sign in with it or reconnect it.

If nothing's connected

You can still chat with Pepper. When you ask about your calendar or inbox and the relevant account isn't connected, Pepper tells you it's not connected rather than guessing — and points you to where to connect it. If Calendar is connected but no calendars are included — you can switch them all off deliberately — Pepper will let you know that too, rather than reporting an empty schedule.

The Calendar app opens either way. Without Google Calendar you still get the calendar itself, with anything you follow on it and a Connect Google Calendar button above it; + Create event takes you to the same place, since a new event needs a calendar to go on. If no calendars are included, or a connection has stopped working, the same line offers Manage calendars or Reconnect Google instead.

A note on security

Pepper never sees or stores your Google password — only the access Google grants, kept encrypted. For what Pepper keeps once a connection is live, and every control you have over it, see Your data. Anything that changes your calendar or sends mail goes through an explicit confirmation in the conversation — Pepper won't add, move, cancel, or send anything without checking with you first.