Google Drive is rolling out a new homepage that aims to make it easier and faster for you to find files, even as the company is facing an issue that saw files go missing from users’ drives. Google has acknowledged the problem and expects a solution within the next few days. The cloud storage service is also expanding its document scanning feature to iOS devices, a decade after launching it on Android devices, it announced today.
Google Drive’s new “Home” view leverages machine learning algorithms to automatically suggest files and folders, including ones you’ve recently opened, shared or edited. It will also suggest any documents attached to upcoming Google Calendar events.
Additionally, the homepage offers new filters or “search chips,” to search documents by type, people, modified date or location. There are separate tabs to switch between files and folders.
Google explained in a blog post that it’s utilizing Google’s Material Design 3 guidelines for a more “modern design.” Material 3 is the latest release of Google’s open source design system, designed to be cohesive with Android 12, 13 and 14.
Google Drive’s Home view is now the default homepage. However, you can switch back to the old landing page by clicking on the “Change to My Drive” option in the banner.
It’s available to all Google Workspace users and people with personal Google Accounts. The update will finish rolling out in January. Google began testing the new homepage in May.
Google is also finally expanding its document scanning feature to iOS devices, which first launched on Android in 2013. Apple introduced its scanner feature in the Notes app in 2017.
Located in the Drive app, Google’s scanner allows you to scan physical documents, apply filters, crop them as needed and then save them to Drive.
Google also announced that the Drive scanner on Android now includes an automatic capture feature, an option to import documents from your camera roll, a new scanner button to quickly initialize a scan and a camera viewfinder to help position the document. Earlier this year, Google added title suggestions for scanned documents.
Earlier this week, reports suggested that Google Drive experienced problems with missing files. According to multiple posts on the Google Support forum, some users lost access to their files, which appeared to completely disappear from the cloud service. The company said it was investigating the reports and warned users not to disconnect their account or delete/move the app data folder.
“We have identified the issue impacting a small subset of Drive for desktop users on version 84, which only affected local file changes that had yet to be synced to Drive,” wrote a company representative. “We are working on a solution to make files available to users and expect the solution to be available in the next few days.”
Comment