So Long Drive, Hello File Stream

The days of the Google Drive desktop app are gone. Personal Google accounts are switching to the new Backup and Sync App while enterprise accounts, like your Harding account, are switching to a new program called Google Drive File Stream. Gone are the days of having all or almost all of your Drive cloned to your desktop. Now you can view and edit files without even downloading them. While you can still opt to download the files, if you choose to just stream your files, you will end up waiting less time for files to sync and using almost no space on your hard drive. You also will have access to Team Drives using the app, this will allow for greater collaborative efforts. File steam also employs a small amount of machine learning to estimate the odds for you needing certain files and preloading those file in the background to make it even faster.

So what are some changes you may notice with the interface of the app. Well the first thing you will notice is that the icon is different. 

You will also be able to see that the Google Drive folder is no longer just a local folder stored on your local device. It has become a network drive mounted on your computer.

When using the Mac version the menu panel that is housed in the menu bar has had a face lift as well. The menu in this panel is more stream lined and the interface was cleaned up to follow suit with the other programs in the Google suite.

No longer will we have to worry about the big, bad Google Drive app syncing overnight and taking up the last few gigs left on our hard drives.