Tag Archives: Google Drive

Enhance Your Organization’s Security with Out-of-Domain File Warnings in Google Workspace

What’s changing

Today we’re launching Out-of-Domain file-level warnings, now publicly available to all Google Workspace users. Specifically, a badge will be displayed on Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides files when the file is owned by or shared with someone outside of your domain. You'll also see a pop-up with more details and the option to report the externally owned file for abuse. 

An image showing a Google Doc with the word "External" displayed in a small yellow badge next to the document title. The badge has been clicked, and a pop-up window appears with more information stating that “This document is owned by someone outside your organization. Be cautious about sharing sensitive information
Image of "External" badge displayed in Google Docs


This feature helps users identify potentially risky files and avoid phishing scams when working with files shared from outside your organization.


Additional details

  • Known Limitations:
    • For externally shared content, the badge will not be displayed if any internal Google Groups have access to the document, even if these groups have external members.
    • If any service accounts have access to the document, the External badge will be displayed, even if the service account is owned internally.


Getting started

Screenshot of the Google Workspace Admin console, navigated to Sharing settings. At the bottom of the page, a new section labeled "Highlight external files" is highlighted. The checkbox is checked, and the description reads: "Mark external files shared or owned externally as “external” to flag that content may be viewable outside your organization.
 Image of the Google Workspace Admin console, Sharing settings, showing the "Highlight external files" option enabled


Rollout pace


Availability

  • Available for all Google Workspace customers, as well as Cloud Identity customers

Resources

Gemini in Drive PDF Viewer is now available in 20+ additional languages

What’s changing 

Last year, we introduced the ability to use Gemini in Google Drive to interact with PDFs and later improved upon this by integrating Gemini in the side panel of Google Drive's overlay PDF viewing experience. Today, we’re excited to announce that the ability to interact with PDFs in Google Drive’s file viewer is now available in the following languages:
  • Spanish 
  • Portuguese 
  • Japanese 
  • Korean 
  • Italian 
  • French 
  • German 
  • Mandarin
  • Dutch 
  • Malay 
  • Modern Hebrew 
  • Polish 
  • Turkish 
  • Common Czech 
  • Indonesian 
  • Central Standard Swedish 
  • Standard Danish 
  • Norwegian 
  • Vietnamese 
  • Thai 
  • Ukrainian 
  • Finnish 
  • Arabic 
  • Greek 
  • Russian 
  • Hungarian 
  • Catalan Valencian 
  • Romanian 

As a result, you can now use Gemini in Drive in even more languages to do things like: 
  • Admins: To access Gemini in the side panel of Workspace apps, users need to have smart features and personalization turned on. Admins can turn on default personalization setting for their users in the Admin console. 
  • End users: 
    • To access this feature, double-click on a PDF from the Google Drive file list and click on "Ask Gemini" (star button) in the top right corner. 
    • Note: When Gemini initially launched in Workspace, PDFs viewed in Drive opened in a new browser tab to allow interaction with the Gemini side panel. With this update, the default behavior will open a file in the overlay file previewer. If you prefer for PDFs to open in a new tab by default, you can update your PDF opening default behavior in your Drive settings. If you previously set a preferred PDF opening default behavior in your Drive setting, your default open behavior will remain the same. 
    • Visit the Help Center to learn more about using Gemini in Drive to work with PDFs. 

Rollout pace 


Availability 

Available to Google Workspace: 
  • Business Standard and Plus 
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus 
  • Google One AI Premium 
  • Customers with the Gemini Education or Gemini Education Premium add-on 
Anyone who previously purchased these add-ons will also receive this feature: 
  • Gemini Business* 
  • Gemini Enterprise* 
*As of January 15, 2025, we’re no longer offering the Gemini Business and Gemini Enterprise add-ons for sale. Please refer to this announcement for more details.


Resources 

Get started with Gemini in Google Drive quickly with new “nudges”

What’s changing 

You can use Gemini in the side panel of Google Drive to summarize one or multiple documents, get quick facts about a project, interact with PDFs, have focused conversations about a specific Drive folder, create files and folders and more. 

To help you get started with Gemini in Drive even faster, you’ll notice the following clickable “nudges” at the top of your Drive homepage and folders. These will continue to evolve, and can include nudges to: 
  • Learn about Gemini in Drive 
  • Summarize a folder in Drive 
  • Learn about a file in Drive

nudges in drive home

Nudges in Drive home
nudges in drive folder
Nudges in a Drive folder



Getting started

Rollout pace 

Availability

Available for Google Workspace:
  • Business Standard and Plus 
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus 
  • Customers with the Gemini Education or Gemini Education Premium add-on 
  • Google One AI Premium 
Anyone who previously purchased these add-ons will also receive this feature: 
  • Gemini Business* 
  • Gemini Enterprise* 
*As of January 15, 2025, we’re no longer offering the Gemini Business and Gemini Enterprise add-ons for sale. Please refer to this announcement for more details.

The ability to run Google Drive on Arm-compatible Windows PCs is now generally available

What’s changing

Last year, we introduced a new beta that supports running Google Drive on Arm-compatible Windows PCs, and today we’re excited to announce this is now generally available. 


Compiled for ARM64, this release enables users to easily sync and store files online from Windows PCs powered by Snapdragon processors. 


Getting started 

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: 
    • This feature is only available on devices running Windows 11 and Microsoft WebView2, which is typically included with Windows 11. If it is missing or was previously removed, our installer will ask to install it for you (as long as you have an internet connection). Visit the Help Center to learn about system requirements & browsers. 
    • Note: Existing beta users will automatically be updated to the stable version. If you did not participate in the open beta, download and install Google Drive for desktop on a Arm-compatible Windows 11 devices. 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts 

Resources 

Use Gemini in the side panel of Workspace apps in four more languages

What’s changing

Beginning today, Gemini in the side panel of Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Drive, and Gmail can be used in four additional languages: 
  • Greek 
  • Catalan 
  • Indonesian 
  • Malay 

With Gemini in the side panel of your Workspace apps, you can get help summarizing, brainstorming, and generating content by utilizing insights gathered from your emails, documents, and more—all without switching applications or tabs. Check out our original announcements for Gemini in the side panel of Docs, Sheets, and Drive, and Gmail for even more information. Image generation is supported in these languages as well. 


Additional details 

  • Users may see the “Alpha” badge as we bring more features into Gemini in the side panel of Google Workspace.
  • Image generation of people is not supported in these additional languages at this time.

Getting started 


Rollout pace


Availability 

Gemini in the side panel of Docs, Sheets, Drive is available to Google Workspace: 
  • Business Standard and Plus 
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus 
  • Customers with the Gemini Education or Gemini Education Premium add-on 
  • Customers with the Gemini Business or Gemini Enterprise add-on* 
Gemini in the side panel of Gmail is available to Google Workspace:
  • Business Starter, Standard and Plus 
  • Enterprise Starter, Standard and Plus 
  • Customers with the Gemini Education or Gemini Education Premium add-on 
  • Customers with the Gemini Business or Gemini Enterprise add-on* 
*As of January 15, 2025, we’re no longer offering the Gemini Business and Gemini Enterprise add-ons for sale. Please refer to this announcement for more details.

Resources 

Create files and folders using Gemini in the side panel of Google Drive

What’s changing 

Since rolling out Gemini in the side panel of Google Drive, users have been able to summarize one or multiple documents, get quick facts about a project, interact with the Gemini side panel while viewing PDFs, and we most recently added folder support. 

Today, we’re excited to expand Gemini in Drive capabilities by introducing the ability to create new Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and folders in your Drive. As part of this update, we’re introducing support for two new types of prompts using Gemini in the side panel.
  • “Create a new folder” (with or without specifying what to name it) 
  • “Create a new Google Doc, Sheet or Slide” (with or without specifying what to name it) 
create new Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and folders in your Drive using Gemini


Who’s impacted 

End users 


Why you’d use it 

This new capability will help you streamline your file and folder creation journeys without needing to leave the side panel to create new Docs, Sheets, Slides and folders. By typing in one of the supported prompts, Gemini will create the new, titled file or folder and provide you with a link. 


Getting started 

Rollout pace 


Availability 

Available for Google Workspace: 
  • Business Standard and Plus 
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus 
  • Customers with the Gemini Education or Gemini Education Premium add-on 
  • Google One AI Premium 
Anyone who previously purchased these add-ons will also receive this feature: 
  • Gemini Business* 
  • Gemini Enterprise* 
*As of January 15, 2025, we’re no longer offering the Gemini Business and Gemini Enterprise add-ons for sale. Please refer to this announcement for more details.

Resources 

New Google Drive Inventory Reporting enhancements provide even richer insights into file permissions

What's changing

In October 2024, we introduced Google Drive Inventory Reporting, which provides admins with key metadata about the files in their Drive corpus via a BigQuery report. These reports provide admins valuable insights into how data is classified, accessed, and used, which can help identify security risks, ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, and much more. 

Beginning today, we're pleased to announce that we've enhanced Drive Inventory Reporting to include more detailed permission information for files and folders in My Drive. This means you can now access the following schema fields concerning permission details for both shared drive and My Drive files:

  • Inherited: A boolean indicating whether the permission is inherited. 
  • Permission Type: The permission type for the user. 
  • Role: The primary role for the user. 
This update builds on recent upgrades to the access experience in Drive, providing a more comprehensive and unified view of permissions across your entire Drive environment. 


Getting started 

  • Admins: Visit the Help Center to learn more about Drive inventory reporting.
  • End users: There is no end user impact or action required. 

Rollout pace

Availability 

Available* for Google Workspace: 
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus 
  • Education Standard and Plus 
  • Enterprise Essentials Plus 
  • Cloud Identity Premium 
*Note that this availability refers to the ability to generate a report. All end users will be included in the report and are not limited to any specific Google Workspace edition. 

Resources 

Enhancing video navigation and accessibility with Google Drive video transcripts

What’s changing 

Last year, we announced that users can automatically generate captions for any video uploaded to Google Drive, improving the accessibility of videos and saving users the effort of manually creating captions. To build upon this feature and make information discovery, referencing, and productivity with video content much more efficient, we’re excited to introduce video transcripts. 


Starting today, Drive users can now view and search transcripts for their videos. The transcript appears in a sidebar next to the video player and highlights the currently spoken text. This update makes it easy to find specific moments, follow along with the content, or jump directly to the part of the video you need.

video transcripts in drive

Who’s impacted 

End users 


Why it matters 

Video transcripts can improve the accessibility of media stored in Drive and enables you to easily search and navigate to key moments within your video. 


Getting started 

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: 
    • Your video must have captions to access this feature. A video with captions will have the CC button in the bottom right corner of the video player set to active (not grayed out). 
      • You can add captions to a video by right-clicking the video in Drive > selecting Manage caption tracks > generate automatic captions. You can also generate captions when the video is playing by going to the three dot menu on top right > manage captions tracks > generate automatic captions. 
    • To access video transcripts, open a video with captions in Google Drive > click the gear icon in the bottom right corner of the video to open the video settings > select “Transcript” 
    • Visit the Help Center to learn more about turning on video transcripts.

Rollout pace

  • Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 24, 2025 
  • Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 26, 2025, with expected completion by March 26, 2025

Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Google Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts 
    • Note: Users with personal Google accounts can upload or request automatic captions after uploading a video to Drive. 

Resources 

Use Gemini in the side panel of Workspace apps in seventeen more languages

What’s changing 

Beginning today, Gemini in the side panel of Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Drive, and Gmail can be used in seventeen additional languages: 
  • Arabic
  • Chinese
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • Finnish
  • Hebrew
  • Hungarian
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Swedish
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian
  • Vietnamese
With Gemini in the side panel of your Workspace apps, you can get help summarizing, brainstorming, and generating content by utilizing insights gathered from your emails, documents, and more—all without switching applications or tabs. Check out our original announcements for Gemini in the side panel of Docs, Sheets, and Drive, and Gmail for even more information. Image generation is supported in these languages as well. 


Additional details

  • While Gemini in the side panel of Docs, Sheets, Drive, and Gmail, is generally available in these additional languages - as we keep rolling out more Gemini alpha features in the side panel, end users with Gemini alpha features turned on may continue to see the “Alpha” badge. 
  • Gemini in the side panel of Slides and Chat is only available in English at this time.
  • Image generation of people is not supported in these additional languages at this time.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Available to Google Workspace:
  • Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Customers with the Gemini Education or Gemini Education Premium add-on 
  • Customers with the Gemini Business or Gemini Enterprise add-on*

Available for Gemini in the side panel of Gmail for:
  • Business Starter
  • Enterprise Starter
*As of January 15, 2025, we’re no longer offering the Gemini Business and Gemini Enterprise add-ons for sale. Please refer to this announcement for more details.

Resources


Updating the access experience in Google Drive

What’s changing

Last year, we introduced a beta that allows shared drive managers and My Drive owners to restrict folders to specific users. Today, we’re excited to announce the general availability of this feature in shared drives and My Drive, which means that users can restrict access to their My Drive folders using the two options outlined below, and by 2026, we will simplify and align the restricted access principles for My Drive and shared drives.

Current experience for My Drive folders & files (until February 2026): 
Users have two options to restrict access to files or folders in their My Drive: 


1. Update item only: Go to your My Drive > choose a file or folder you want to limit access to for a specific user > Change the role of the specific user (e.g. from Commenter to Viewer) > click on "Update item only"

updating role on a parent folder in drive

2. Limit folder access: Go to your My Drive > choose the folder you want to limit access > click the overflow menu > share > select share settings in the top right corner > click limit access to “Folder Name”.

limiting access to a folder in drive

For My Drive folders & files after February 2026:
By February 2026, we will stop allowing restricted access on specific files and folders as outlined in option 1 above (update item only), and limited access will be done consistently via the limited access folder setting as outlined in option 2 above (limit folder access). In the future, we will identify all the files and folders that are shared less broadly than their containing folder and enable limited access on them. This will not immediately change who has access to those items, but it will make it so that if someone were to share or unshare the item’s parent later, those changes will not apply to the item with limited access. We will provide an update in early 2026 before this process takes place.


For shared drives:
Only shared drive managers and content managers with sharing access can specify who can open a folder and see what's inside. Everyone else with regular access to the shared drive folder will be able to see that a "sensitive" file or folder exists, and can request access to it. This provides shared drive managers with greater flexibility to keep restricted and unrestricted content within a single shared drive, instead of having multiple folders for different access levels.


Who’s impacted 

Admins, end users and developers 


Why it’s important 

For My Drive, folders with limited access allow users to control the information viewed by others in their organization. For shared drives, folders with limited access allow users to organize files by project, in a single shared drive or shared folder, while ensuring that sensitive information is only accessible to the right team members. 


Additional details 

Drive’s public API 
We’re adding improvements to Drive’s public API that make it easier for developers to adopt the expansive access changes outlined above. Given these updates better align the behavior for items in My Drive and in shared drives, we recommend developers opt in to the expansive access API behavior in My Drive ahead of 2026. Visit this developer guide for more information on managing folders with limited and expansive access.

“Editors can change permissions and share” setting 
As a result of this update, the “Editors can change permissions and share” setting will change by August 2025. 
  • Turning the setting off will still prevent users with Editor access from sharing the item directly, but if the owner places the item into a shared folder, any changes to the containing folder’s access will be applied on the item. Previously, those changes were only applied if the item’s owner was the one making the folder access change. 
  • By August 2025, we will apply limited access to items that have this setting turned off. Due to the limited access, the owner will still be the only person who can share those pre-existing items. Limited access will not be applied to items that have the setting turned off after August 2025.

Getting started 

  • Admins: Admins need to set up shared drives for their organization in order for end users to access this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about folders with limited access.
  • End users: 
    • As a shared drive manager or My Drive folder owner, go to your shared drive or My Drive folder > choose the folder you want to limit access > click the overflow menu > share > select share settings in the top right corner > click limited access to “Folder Name”. 
    • Folders with limited access can only be opened by people who have been added to it directly. People with general access to the shared drive or shared folder can see the restricted folder in Drive, but will not be able to open it. 
    • Folders with limited access are available in both shared drives and My Drive: 
      • Shared drive managers can always access folders with limited-access 
      • Folder owners can always access limited-access folders in their My Drive 
    • For users whose access has been limited, you will see the folder name, but the folder will be grayed out: For users whose access has been limited, you will see the folder name, but the folder will be grayed out
    • Visit the Help Center to learn more about folders with limited access. 
  • Developers: Visit the Developer Documentation to learn more about managing folders with limited and expansive access. If you decide to opt into the expansive access API early, your app's behavior will not change when Drive stops allowing restricted access in 2026. 

Rollout pace 

Folders with limited access: 
API changes for Expansive Access: 

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts 

Resources