Google Drive

Following the Gmail redesign last week, Google today showed off Material You for the key Workspace apps on Android 12. This includes Google Calendar, Drive, Docs, Gmail, Meet, Sheets, and Slides.

When enabled, Drive today lets you view/edit recent Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides in Chrome without an internet connection. Google Drive’s offline mode now works with PDFs, Office files, and images.

Google today announced a “Security update” for Drive to “make file sharing more secure.” This is part of a broader company-wide change that also affects YouTube and will impact the productivity app on September 13, 2021.

Over the past few years, some malicious actors have leveraged Google Drive sharing to target people with spam-filled documents. Google now has a solution to that form of spam with user blocking in Drive.

At the start of this year, Google announced that it was revamping its desktop client strategy for Drive. The new “Google Drive for desktop” that replaces “Backup and Sync” by adding automatic Google Photos upload is now appearing for some users. 

In addition to Gmail, Meet, and other Workspace announcements today, Google Docs and Drive will soon get Client-side encryption where “customer data is indecipherable to Google.”

At I/O 2021 on Tuesday, Google spent part of the keynote talking about privacy and security. It’s following that up with a prominent “We protect your privacy” message in Gmail and Google Photos.

If you’re having trouble with Google Drive services this morning, you’re not alone. Google Drive is experiencing a partial outage that’s bringing down Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides for many users.

The latest launch from Google’s internal Area 120 incubator is smaller in scale than a messaging or virtual events tool but even more useful. Google this week released “Stacks” as a “PDF Scanner + Document Organizer” for Android.

Google is introducing a “new way to view and manage notifications” related to your Drive files. The hope is that users with this new notifications feed will spend less time switching between Google Drive for Android and an email app.

Last month, we reported that Drive File Stream was being renamed to “Google Drive for desktop.” This name change is part of a broader move in 2021 to unify the current enterprise client with the consumer-focused Backup and Sync app that offers Google Photos upload.

Drive File Stream is a Mac and Windows app that lets enterprise users access files stored in Google’s cloud on demand, and it’s now being renamed to “Google Drive for desktop.”

On the first of this year, Google Cloud Print shut down after 10 years. An associated capability that lets users print a PDF copy of a web page and have that file automatically upload to Google Drive was also supposed to be deprecated. However, the feature is now living on in the ‘Save to Google Drive’ Chrome extension.

Back in September, Google introduced iPhone and iPad widgets for Photos, Search, and YouTube Music. In addition to Gmail yesterday, Google Drive and Fit widgets are now on the iOS home screen, with Calendar and Chrome also previewed today. 

In addition to Photos ending unlimited free backup, Google is making a change to how Docs, Sheets, Slides, and other similar files are stored. The company also announced new auto-delete polices for inactive and full accounts.

Google’s editing applications can open and edit Microsoft files, with that capability recently coming to Android. When opening Office files from the Drive web client, Google will now directly open them in editing mode.