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.
Back in 2019, Google started beta testing this capability. The ability to select what PDFs, images, and Microsoft Office documents you want offline is now generally available.
Users can access all of their important Drive files while offline such as when they’re traveling or when there’s poor internet connectivity.
To do so, you must have the Google Drive for desktop app on Mac or Windows installed. Afterwards, make sure “Offline” access is enabled in Drive settings (top-right corner gear icon) on the web. Once that set-up process is complete, right-clicking on a supported file will show an “Available offline” toggle.
When you mark these files available offline, you can easily open these files from your browser even when you aren’t connected to the internet.
These non-Google files “need to be opened using apps installed on your computer through Google Drive Web when offline” and are badged on drive.google.com with a download icon. A similar capability is already available in the Chrome OS Files app.
This feature is rolling out now and will be fully available over the coming weeks:
Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as Cloud Identity Free, Cloud Identity Premium, G Suite Basic and Business customers. Available on personal accounts as well.
More about Google Drive:
- Google Drive ‘security update’ will change share links for some files this year [U: Email]
- Drive rolling out the ability to block users that share spam [Updated]
- Google Drive adds audio playback speed, notification media player controls on Android
- Google Workspace adding Client-side encryption for Drive and Docs apps
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