Category: Google Drive

Google Drive for web is getting some much needed improvements around downloading files and folders to your local PC, Mac or Chromebook.  The update, which is in rapid release now and will be out to every by September 6th, will bring improved zip file downloading from your online content.  The update will break up large downloads into 2GB zip files and will number them sequentially.  The update means that downloading larger files or folders of content will be a bit easier to manage.

For those of you who are Local Guides approaching Level 4, you need to get-to-gettin’.  Google has announced that if you unlock Level 4 by July 21st, you will still get the current 1TB of Google Drive storage for 2 years.  If however, you reach that level after the 21st, you will get 100GB.

We are changing the Drive storage benefit for Level 4 from 1 TB to 100 GB, so that we can continue giving Drive storage to all Level 4 qualified Local Guides. Existing Local Guides who were signed up before July 7, 2016 (12am GMT) can still unlock the original 1 TB offer if they reach Level 4 by July 21, 2016 (12am GMT).

The change is a disappointment for sure but has likely come to bare with all of the new Local Guides that are in play now (to be fair, Google did promote the heck out of it).  Still, the 100GB is in line with other promotions that Google offers.  Chromebook owners get a free 100GB of storage when they register their devices so this change is inline with other promotions.

If you are a user of the Google Drive app on your PC or Mac, make sure you are up-to-date.  Google has announced that starting July 1st, support for versions 1.22 and older will end.  Version 1.22 is over a year old so the cut back on support for it and older versions makes sense and falls in line with what the company has done on older version of other apps.  For reference, the latest version of the Drive sync app for PC is build 1.29.2074.1528.   To see what version you are running, open up the sync app, click on the menu (3 vertical dots) and then click about.  If you need to update, just go to your Drive folder online and in the lower left corner click on the Download for PC or Mac button.

Google Drive is rolling out an update to the web side of the service that will allow you to chose on a file-by-file level, the files that you sync with your PC for offline use.  The ability to sync files with your PC has been there for a while with the Google Drive app for PC or Mac but that is an all or nothing proposition at the file level.  You can select folders but you will get every file in that folder.  While this update is only on the web side of Drive, with it you can select an individual file to sync with your PC for offline use.

This one is kind of a big deal folks.  The latest update to Google Drive for PC and Mac will now allow you to selectively sync sub folders within your Google Drive account.  Up until now, you could only select the main folder off the root of your drive.  That works in most cases but there are times where you want some sub folders on your PC but not necessarily the entire sub directory.

When it comes to photo management and editing, Google Photos is an outstanding tool and it is available for Android and iOS devices.  But for long time Google Drive users, there is a bit of confusion as to when to use Drive versus Photos and what each of them do when it comes to your photos.  Fellow Top Contributor for Google Photos, Scott Peachey, has put together an excellent video to explain how it all works together.