---
title: A connected app isn't being used
description: Connecting an app does not put it into a run, and the home screen cannot add one. The one place it works, and how to confirm the app is really in play.
---

**Add the app from inside a chat, not from the home screen.** Send your opening message
first, then open the panel above the composer — the button reading **What it can use** —
and switch the app on under **Workspace**. That is the only place the control works.

The rest of this page is why, because the symptom is confusing enough that people re-connect
the app several times before finding the real cause.

## Two separate steps, and one of them is easy to miss

Connecting an app links your account. It does **not** make the app available to a run. The
13 built-in Add-ons all arrive switched on; a connected app arrives switched **off** and has
to be added to each run deliberately. That is by design — an app being in play is always the
result of an explicit act, and always visible.

So a run that never touches your Drive is usually not failing. It was never given Drive.

## Why the home screen says *Connect in Apps* on an app you connected

This part is a genuine defect, not a misunderstanding, and it is worth stating plainly: **the
home composer does not read your connections at all.** Every app in its list shows
*Connect in Apps* whether you have connected it or not, and tapping one takes you to the
Apps screen instead of adding it to the run.

If you connected an app and the home screen still tells you to connect it, the app is fine.
The home screen is the thing that is wrong. Open a chat and the same panel resolves
honestly, showing connected apps as selectable.

## How to confirm the app is actually in play

Once added, a connected app appears as a **chip above the input** — *Gmail*, *Notion* —
before you send. If the chip is not there, the app is not in the run, whatever the
connection screen says.

Built-in Add-ons deliberately do not chip; there are too many of them and they are always on.
So the absence of chips means "no apps added", not "nothing available".

## The related failures

- **Naming an app in your request does not grant access.** *"Find the deck in Drive"* on a
  run with no Drive stops and asks. The request is not the permission.
- **A narrowed run asks instead of reaching.** The panel footer states the rule —
  *Only what you pick here is available to this run* — and that includes the built-ins. An
  over-narrowed run comes back with a question rather than a result.
- **Your selection persists per chat.** Reopen tomorrow and the apps you gave it are still
  the apps it has. A **new** chat starts from the defaults again, with no apps.
- **An assistant may not offer every app you have connected.** The set the assistant builder
  lists is not identical to the set on the Apps screen. If an app you connected is not
  selectable there, it is not a connection problem — add it to the run from the in-chat
  **What it can use** panel instead, where connected apps resolve honestly.

## When it is added and still does nothing

- **Check the step list.** If no step reached the app, the job may not have called for it —
  naming the app in the request removes that ambiguity.
- **Check for a waiting approval.** Anything that leaves an app — sending, publishing,
  buying, changing things — stops for you at the moment it is about to act, whatever your
  setting. A run that looks idle may be waiting on that.
  [When it checks with you](/docs/when-it-checks-with-you) covers it.
- **Check the account.** Read-only connections cannot write. What each app can do, and how
  your credentials are stored, is on [Connecting your apps](/docs/connecting-apps).

[Using an app you connected](/docs/using-your-apps) is the full version of this page, including
how to keep a run to just the apps you meant.