Connecting Google

Last updated 4 November 2026

Clive can work with your own Google account: find a person in your contacts, read the email you ask about, read a sheet you pick, look at your calendar for the days you ask about, save a report to your Drive, and put up an email for you to send. Connecting is your choice, and you can disconnect at any time.

How to connect

Clive asks for Google one feature at a time, when you first ask for something that needs it: your mail, your sheets, your calendar, sending an email, or finding a person in your contacts. A card in the conversation says what that feature reads or does and what Clive never does with it, and its button opens Google's own screen, where you choose. Once you've connected it, Clive carries on with what you asked, without your asking again. Leave a box unticked or cancel and that feature stays off; ask Clive for it again whenever you want it. Use the Google account whose email address you sign in to Clive with: Clive refuses any other account. Settings lists what you've connected. Sheets are added from a computer; once added, Clive reads them on your phone too.

What each permission is for

• Which account is yours (openid, email). Clive gets your Google account's email address and the account ID Google sends with it, and checks the email is the one you sign in to Clive with.
• Read your Gmail (gmail.readonly). To find and read the email or attachment you ask about, while you're asking. Clive doesn't read your mail in the background.
• Send email as you (gmail.send). Only when you tap Send on an email Clive has put up for you. Nothing written in an email can make him send.
• Read your contacts (contacts.readonly). To find a person you name, so he can show their number or email address on the card he puts up for you, or address an email to them.
• Your Drive files, only the ones you pick or Clive makes (drive.file). He reads only the sheets you pick, and saves the reports you ask for in a Clive / Reports folder in your Drive.
• See the events on Google calendars you own (calendar.events.owned.readonly). Clive reads only your main calendar: to show its events for the days you ask about, each one's title, start, end and place, and to work out the free time between them, while you're asking. Clive doesn't read your calendar in the background.

What Clive never does

• Change, label, move or delete your email, or save drafts.
• Add, change or delete your contacts.
• Open Drive files you haven't picked, other than the reports and folders he made.
• Add, change, move or delete calendar events, or answer invitations.
• Send anything without your tap.
• Use your Google data to train AI, sell it, or use it for ads.

What Clive keeps

The emails, files and calendar events Clive reads are not written to disk, and an attachment is held in memory for 30 minutes at most. His replies built from them are deleted 30 days after the conversation's last message, and suggestions built from them that you haven't locked in are deleted 30 days after he put them up. Your record holds a line naming the Google account you connected, and any fact you lock in. The privacy policy has the rest.

Disconnecting

In Clive, open Settings, tap Disconnect, then tap again. Clive asks Google to withdraw his access, deletes his own copy of it, and takes the line naming your Google account out of your record. If Google doesn't confirm just then, Clive tells you, and you can finish it at Google. Settings shows each feature you've connected.

At Google, at any time: go to myaccount.google.com/linkedapps, choose Clive, then Remove access.