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The new Drive app is a huge 238MiB download and a painless but long installation (a few minutes).
Jim Salter
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Once the installation is complete, new Drive users are offered an excellent brief feature tour.
Jim Salter
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You can run locally installed Google Drive folders in one of two ways – streaming or mirrored. Streaming folders do not download files from the cloud unless and until you actually open them.
Jim Salter
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There are additional settings located behind the gear icon in the Google Drive Options dialog itself. Note the drive letter selection, Office presence detection, and Photo quality settings.
Jim Salter
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Under Office settings, drive letter, and Photos, we can scroll down to set the local cache file directory, proxy settings, and bandwidth limits.
Jim Salter
Google has launched a new Google Drive desktop app that replaces the old version for home and business. The new Drive app builds features from Google Photos, Backup and Sync (older apps, especially users), and Drive File Stream (older versions, targeted for businesses).
characteristics
Frankly, there doesn’t seem to be anything new in the upgraded app – the update looks like a cleanup and consolidation effort from the rest. Key features include:
- Upload and sync photos to Google cloud storage – including automatic compression and resizing, for those who choose “Storage” instead of the original picture quality
- Syncs external storage devices (thumb drives, USB hard drives, and SSDs) to Google Drive
- (Optional) two -way file and folder synchronization – download files to local folders automatically and vice versa
- Locally installed Drive folders in Stream or Mirror mode – download files on demand or retrieve all files from the cloud automatically
- In -app support for shared Google drives (new feature, not available in Backup and Sync)
- Integration with Microsoft Outlook and Google Meet scheduling
Upgrade to the new Drive app
According to Google’s introduction, older users of the Backup and Sync app will start getting in -app instructions to switch to Drive for desktop, which it recommends users finish in September of this year.
Backup and Sync users will support guided workflows to transition from old apps to new apps on July 19th, and Google Workspace domains (Rapid and Scheduled release tracks) will see in -app notifications prompting the transition starting on August 18th. Unused backups and the Sync app will stop working completely on October 1st.
Who is this for?
The answer is simple, but we want to draw the bottom line because it’s not common at the moment—all Users of Google services will be able to use the new Drive app. These include free personal accounts and paid enterprise Google Workspace accounts.
In other words, if you’re a Google Drive user, it’s time to download a new app – there’s no point in turning it off. If you’re a Google Workspace administrator, you have two months to test and use the new app before Backup and Sync curves and expires on October 1st.
Listing photo by Jim Salter