Google Drive

Following Gmail at the start of this year, Google Drive is the latest iOS app to get new work-focused widgets, while there are also updates for Translate and Chat on iOS in the coming weeks.

Like email, the experience of searching through files can always benefit from improvements. For its part, Google Drive is in the process of beta testing search chips to “help users refine their search and locate files faster.”

As teased in recent weeks, Google Drive now offers a new Material You widget on Android 12 that lets you “quickly access suggested files and search.” 

Over the past few months, Chrome has been surfacing helpful panels on the New Tab Page, and the latest card is for intelligent Google Drive file suggestions.

Google Workspace was announced at the start of October as a rebrand of G Suite and revamped approach to office-less productivity. As part of these changes, all of Google’s Workspace apps are seeing new icons, with the rollout now underway.

Last week, Google announced that Material You is actively rolling out to the key Workspace apps on Android, including Drive. The Google Drive redesign also brings along new widgets including a quirky and large X-shaped one.

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.