Google removes Banana emoji '🍌' from Gemini's image creation button

Google has quietly taken the banana emoji off Gemini’s image creation button, and yes, people noticed. A Reddit post in r/GeminiAI titled “They removed the 🍌 from the Nano-Banana” started picking up traction after users spotted that the old shortcut had been swapped out for a more generic image-style icon.

That tiny UI tweak has turned into one of those oddly lively Gemini conversations that only the internet can produce. Some users were annoyed because the banana had become part of Nano Banana’s identity, while others said it was confusing from day one and never made much sense to regular users trying to generate an image.

The funny part is that Google’s own official wording does not seem fully in sync yet. On the company’s image generation page for Gemini, Google still tells users to select “🍌Create images” from the tools menu, which suggests the banana branding is still alive in documentation even if it is starting to disappear from the actual interface.

Reddit comments on the thread show a split reaction, with some calling the new icon bland and others saying the banana looked random unless you already knew Nano Banana was the name tied to Gemini’s image model.

There is also a bigger product shift happening in the background. Google launched Nano Banana 2 in late February and said the newer model, technically Gemini 3.1 Flash Image, would become the default image generation model across the Gemini app, while promising faster editing and high-quality image creation.

So this is not just about one missing emoji. It looks like Google is slowly sanding down some of the quirky Nano Banana branding as Gemini’s image tools become more mainstream and more tightly folded into the broader product.

There is a recent precedent for that too. 9to5Google reported in December that Google removed the banana emoji from the Remix button in Google Messages beta as well, replacing it with a more standard icon, so Gemini losing its banana does not look like an isolated move anymore.

For longtime Gemini users, the banana was a weird but memorable detail. For everyone else, Google may have decided that “Create images” works better when the button just looks like, well, a button for creating images.

Featured image edited with AI