If you are a Google Drive user, you may have noticed that Google has been implementing a number of changes over the past few months. First there was a change to the look of the file sharing service, then to how you accessed files. Now the tech company has announced that they have launched separate sites for their productivity apps.
About the recent change to Drive
In order to make users’ lives easier, Google has decided to kind of spin off their productivity apps. What do we mean by this? Well, the company has announced that they are launching individual sites for Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Now, instead of going to Drive to open or create a new Doc, you can do so by going to the Docs site.
Each of the three major productivity apps – Docs, Sheets and Slides – now has their own site, and can be accessed here:
This isn’t a full spin off because your files created and edited using the individual app sites are still stored on Drive. The idea here is that this separation is supposed to make it easier for users to interact with each different productivity apps and related files.
When will this shift happen?
Google has started to alert Drive users to the impending switch and has indicated that Docs will be the first to move over to the new system. That being said, you can actually access the three different apps now, or you can still use Drive to create your files for the time being, just be prepared for a shift in the near future.
Getting around the new sites
Each of the three new sites has pretty much the same layout, with the following elements being the most useful:
- Plus button at the bottom-right: Pressing this will open a new Docs, Sheets or Slides file.
- Three horizontal bars at the top-left: Will slide a menu in from the left with the options to open either the Docs, Sheets, or Slides sites, along with Settings and Drive.
- File sorting icons at the top-right: The four horizontal lines button will switch files in between either List or Grid view. The button with A to Z is for sorting options which will allow you to configure how related files are sorted.
- Folder icon at the top-right: Clicking this will open the File picker which will allow you to quickly navigate to different folders on your Drive, and also upload other files such as Microsoft Office documents or PDFs.
If you are a heavy user of one of the Google Drive apps, then these sites will likely be a welcome addition. The same can be said for those who use the mobile apps which were released earlier this year.
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