Permissions and what they unlock
Pepper starts out able to see nothing. Every permission below is optional, off until you turn it on, and you can take it back later. Here is what each one is for.
Your calendar
Your calendar is what lets "what does my day look like?" and "am I free Thursday afternoon?" have answers. Pepper can schedule around what's already there rather than on top of it, put your day in your morning brief, and turn "move my 2pm to Friday" or "cancel Thursday's standup" into a changed calendar rather than one more thing to go and do yourself.
Which calendars are included
Most people have calendars they don't plan around — a subscribed holiday feed, a colleague's shared calendar, an old project. Counting those would make every day look busy and every free slot look taken. Pepper starts with your main calendar and leaves the rest to you, so "you're free at 3" means free.
You can widen or narrow this at any time under Settings → Calendars.
Your Gmail
Reading and searching your mail is what lets Pepper tell you what came in overnight that matters, find the thread you half-remember, and summarize a long one. Your morning brief can say what's waiting instead of leaving you to find out.
Sending from your address is separate, and Pepper normally shows you what it's about to send first. Pepper can also write to other people from its own address with you copied in, when you'd rather it not come from you.
Your contacts
Read access to your contacts is what makes names resolve to people: "email Sam about Thursday" reaches the right Sam, and "schedule with Priya" finds her address without you spelling it out. Without it, every name is a guess.
Your Drive
Read-only access lets you ask about a document instead of opening it — "summarize the roadmap doc", "what's the total in the budget sheet?", "what did people say in the comments?" Pepper reads what's inside your Docs, Sheets and Slides to answer.
Read-only is the whole grant. Pepper can't create, edit, rename, move, delete or share anything in your Drive, and it can't change who has access to a file.
Your phone number
A confirmed mobile number lets you text Pepper the way you'd text a person, and lets it send your morning brief as a text instead of an email. The confirmation code is so a mistyped digit doesn't send your brief to a stranger.
Your timezone
Your zone is how "remind me at 8" means eight where you are, and how every time Pepper shows you — an event, a reminder, when something arrived — is rendered where you live rather than where a server runs. Without it, every time-related answer is quietly wrong.
Your town
Roughly where you are is what makes the weather in your morning brief your weather, and lets "what's the weather like this weekend?" work without you saying where. A town is as precise as this needs to be — Pepper doesn't read your device's location and nothing here follows you around.
Notifications
Letting your browser show notifications is what gets a reminder to you when you're not looking at Pepper, which is when a reminder is worth anything. The toggle is under Settings → Notifications.
What holds for all of it
- Nothing is on until you turn it on. Signing in and connecting a service are separate steps, so what Pepper can reach is always something you decided.
- Granting something and using it are different decisions. Settings keeps a per-capability checklist, so you can stop Pepper reading your mail without disconnecting the account. That stops Pepper using it and leaves the permission itself with Google, which is what makes switching it back on instant.
- Pepper generally checks with you before it acts on your behalf — sending mail, changing a calendar, writing to someone as you.
- To withdraw a permission at Google, disconnect the account or revoke its access — Pepper tells Google to cancel it, not just its own copy. See Connecting your accounts.
- For what's kept once a connection is live, who else ever touches it, and how to get a copy or delete it, see Your data.