Google Gemini API Upload file larger than 20 MB

[georgezhai123]

Currently, the gemini model doesn't allow uploading file for more than 20 MB ( attached with prompt). However, google has a File API which supports files more than 20 MB, if this feature could be implmeneted that would be very useful for Gemini's long context capability

[yuheitomi]

@georgezhai123 I'm not aware it was doable when you asked this question two months back, but AI SDK doc says you could use Gemini's native file API to upload a large file then pass it to the prompt.

• https://sdk.vercel.ai/providers/ai-sdk-providers/google-generative-ai#file-inputs
• https://ai.google.dev/api/files

This is my test code and it looks working:

import process from "node:process";
import { extname } from "jsr:@std/path";

import mime from "mime";
import { generateText } from "ai";
import { google } from "@ai-sdk/google";
import { GoogleAIFileManager } from "@google/generative-ai/server";

const apiKey = process.env.GOOGLE_GENERATIVE_AI_API_KEY;
if (!apiKey) {
  console.log("Please provide a Google API key.");
  process.exit(1);
}

const fileManager = new GoogleAIFileManager(apiKey);

async function main() {
  console.log(Deno.args);
  if (Deno.args.length === 0) {
    console.log("Please provide a file path.");
    return;
  }

  const filepath = Deno.args[0];
  const fileExt = extname(filepath);
  const mimeType = mime.getType(fileExt);
  if (!mimeType) {
    console.log("Unsupported file type.");
    return;
  }

  console.log(`File path: ${filepath}`);
  console.log(`MIME type: ${mimeType}`);
  console.log("Uploading file...");

  const geminiFile = await fileManager.uploadFile(filepath, { mimeType });
  console.log("File uploaded: ", geminiFile.file.uri);

  const fileUri = geminiFile.file.uri;
  const response = await generateText({
    model: google("gemini-2.0-flash-exp"),
    temperature: 0.0,
    messages: [
      {
        role: "user",
        content: [
          {
            type: "text",
            text: "Summarize the document.",
          },
          {
            type: "file",
            data: fileUri,
            mimeType: mimeType,
          },
        ],
      },
    ],
  });

  console.log(response.text);
}

await main();

Hope this helps.