Media resolution

The media_resolution parameter controls how the Gemini API processes media inputs like images, videos, and PDF documents by determining the maximum number of tokens allocated for media inputs, allowing you to balance response quality against latency and cost. For different settings, default values and how they correspond to tokens, see the Token counts section.

You can configure media resolution for individual media objects (content items) within your request (Gemini 3 only).

Per-content-item media resolution (Gemini 3 only)

Gemini 3 allows you to set media resolution for individual media objects within your request, offering fine-grained optimisation of token usage. You can mix resolution levels in a single request. For example, using high resolution for a complex diagram and low resolution for a simple contextual image.

from google import genai

client = genai.Client()

myfile = client.files.upload(file="path/to/image.jpg")

interaction = client.interactions.create(
    model="gemini-3.7-flash",
    input=[
        {"type": "text", "text": "Describe this image:"},
        {
            "type": "image",
            "uri": myfile.uri,
            "mime_type": myfile.mime_type,
            "resolution": "high"
        }
    ]
)
print(interaction.output_text)

import { GoogleGenAI } from "@google/genai";

const ai = new GoogleGenAI({});

async function main() {
  const myfile = await ai.files.upload({
    file: "path/to/image.jpg",
    config: { mime_type: "image/jpeg" },
  });

  const interaction = await ai.interactions.create({
    model: "gemini-3.7-flash",
    input: [
      { type: