Google To Shut Down Drive Desktop App By March 2018

Google’s long-neglected Google Drive app for desktop is officially on the outs. The search giant announced Thursday that it will cut off support for the app later this year before finally shutting it down in the spring of 2018.

As of Thursday, Google is considering the Google Drive app deprecated. Notifications will start appearing in the app to warn users it is going away in October. The final day of support for the Google Drive desktop app will be December 11.

Google will officially pull the plug on the Google Drive desktop app, both the PC and Mac versions, on March 12, 2018.

For those who count on the Google Drive desktop app for all their document management, fear not. Google has already launched the product designed to replace the zombie Google Drive app.

The new desktop application for G Suite users is called Drive File Stream. Google announced the release of the app in a blog post. According to the company, Drive File Stream will allow users to quickly access Google Drive files on demand, directly from their desktop. The app will use “almost none” of a user’s hard drive space.

Drive File Stream is available to users starting Thursday, though may not appear right away for everyone. Google said the settings that allow for Drive File Stream access will go into effect for most users on September 26.

Google Drive users will be able to access the Drive File Stream app by opening Google Apps, going to G Suite, opening Drive and Docs and selecting Data Access.

Earlier this year, Google also launched another service available to all customers called Backup and Sync. Available on Mac and PC, Backup and Sync allows users to quickly save all of their files to one place. The service saves files to Google Drive and Google Photos, making them accessible anywhere.

In the Help Center, Google laid out the difference between the two apps, where it becomes clear Backup and Sync is a much simpler and arguably less powerful alternative than the full-featured Drive File Stream.

While both products provide access to an individual’s Google Drive and can sync files to that drive, only Drive File Stream allows users to access Team Drives and stream files on demand.

However, Backup and Sync does have one feature Drive File Stream doesn’t: it can sync other folders on the machine to the Drive.

The split in features makes it clear that Drive File Stream is intended more for Google Docs enterprise users while Backup and Sync is a tool for the average consumer, though it seems odd that Google separated the two and provided Backup and Sync with a feature not found in Drive File Stream—though Google has a history of making too many apps and unifying them later, like with its many messaging services.