This official feed from the Google Workspace team provides essential information about new features and improvements for Google Workspace customers.


Google Drive is introducing alignment approvals, a lightweight mechanism that allows teams to request and record document sign-offs without file changes resetting the approval flow. When a document is in a partially approved state, collaborators can continue making edits without resetting any recorded approver decisions.

Alignment approvals can be initiated via a new checkbox within the standard request dialog across web clients.


When checked, "Require all approvers to review the same content" resets pending approvals if the file content changes. This is the default behavior.


When unchecked, changes to the file content don't reset pending approvals.

This feature serves use cases where strict content locking is unnecessary, making it easier for teams to maintain momentum on fluid projects. While an approval remains pending, individual approvers retain the flexibility to manually reset their approved status back to pending if subsequent content edits no longer match their expectations.

This update follows a series of recent enhancements to the Drive approvals ecosystem, including programmatic approval management with the Drive API.

Getting started

  • Admins: Approval requests are enabled by default and can be disabled at the domain, OU, and group level. There is no admin setting that controls alignment approvals specifically; users can access them if they have access to the broader approval request feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing Drive approvals.
  • End users: Alignment approvals will be off by default and can be enabled by the user. Visit the Help Center to learn more about getting approvals in Drive.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Business: Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Education: Education Plus
  • Other Editions: Enterprise Essentials and Enterprise Essentials Plus; Nonprofits
  • Education Add-ons: Teaching and Learning

Resources

Gmail sources in Ask Gemini in Drive is now generally available and has started rolling out to eligible Google Workspace and Google AI plans.

Ask Gemini in Drive offers a dedicated, immersive workspace designed for deep focus. Users can engage in high-context, multi-turn conversations to efficiently explore and understand content.

Previously, users could only add files and folders as sources within Ask Gemini in Drive. Now, users can unlock deeper insights by adding Gmail threads as sources in Ask Gemini for Drive. Users can ground their responses in a complete view of their business context—spanning emails, files, and folders—to ensure the most helpful and accurate answers possible.

Visit the Help Center for more information on the locations and languages where Ask Gemini in Drive is currently supported.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Business: Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
  • Education Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education
  • Other Add-ons: AI Expanded Access

Resources

Tired of scanning one page at a time? With the new Document Scanner in Google Drive on Android, you can now scan multiple pages at the same time. Flip through the pages of a book or lay your receipts out on a table and our Document Scanner will identify, separate, and capture each page within the camera view. It even detects duplicates to prevent accidental re-scans.

Note this is only available for Android devices with 8GB+ RAM.

New multi-page scanning with Android Document Scanner

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

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

Resources

In October 2025, we launched a beta for Organize My Files in Drive. This feature is now generally available and has started rolling out to eligible Google Workspace and Google AI plans.

It can be overwhelming to see loose files in your Drive and moving them into the right folder can be manual, tedious, and repetitive. Gemini can help you organize your Drive by providing suggestions of where to move loose files based on your organizing structure and strategies.


Users can access this view through a dedicated entry point titled “Suggest File Moves” within My Drive and parent folders. The dedicated interface displays recommendations divided into two sections: moving files to existing folders, and creating new folders for related file groupings. End users can review these recommendations before any files are relocated.

The interface supports several interactive adjustments:

  • Reviewing files and folders through hovercards or opening them in a new tab.
  • Selecting or deselecting specific file suggestions using checkboxes.
  • Customizing target destinations or renaming proposed new folders directly inline.
Once the user approves the selection, the system performs a batch move and prompts the user to confirm any resulting permission changes. This feature helps users in reducing digital clutter and maintaining organized file structures with minimal manual effort.

Note that this feature is available globally in English.

Getting started

Note: Through July 15, 2026, Workspace customers will get promotional access to higher limits for Organize My Files, allowing users to experiment with this feature. Users will see a notification when they use this feature to inform them of the limited higher promotional access period. Per-user usage limits will apply after that date; we’ll provide more information in the Help Center in advance of updated usage limits going into effect.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Business: Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
  • Education Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education
  • Other Add-ons: AI Expanded Access

Resources

Previously available in beta, client-side encryption (CSE) customers can now conduct bulk migrations of sensitive files from both cloud and on-premises data sources. This process ensures confidential content is wrapped with customer-managed keys before it's imported into Google Workspace. Using this tooling, CSE customers can decommission their legacy third-party storage while ensuring the CSE model is in place throughout the document lifecycle. The API is highly configurable, we share a generalized sample code to make deployment simple, but customers can further customize it depending on their needs.

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature will be ON by default for customers. Admins or authorized users will need to call the Drive API to leverage the feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more.
  • End users: There is no end-user setting in Drive for this feature.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Enterprise: Enterprise Plus
  • Education: Education Standard and Plus
  • Other Editions: Frontline Plus

Resources

In March, we announced a beta for AI Overviews in Drive. This feature is now generally available and has started rolling out to eligible Google Workspace and Google AI plans.

Instead of searching through endless files and opening dozens of tabs to find the information you need, you can now get instant answers right at the top of your search results. Gemini does the heavy lifting for you, scanning your documents to provide clear, reliable summaries.

Here is how it helps you work smarter:

  • See the big picture: Get a quick summary of information pulled from multiple files without needing to open each one.
  • Ask naturally: There’s no need to use complicated search tricks. Just ask a question as you would to a colleague, like "What’s in our Spring 2026 catalog?"
  • Get the right answer: Gemini automatically understands what you’re looking for, whether it’s a quick fact, a project summary, or a list of specific documents, and adjusts its response to match.
  • Dig deeper with ease: If you need more information, you can go from a quick summary to a deeper conversation with Gemini in just one click.

Getting started

Rollout pace

AI Overviews in Drive in English:


AI Overviews in Drive in 28 additional languages:

Availability

  • Business: Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
  • AI Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education

Resources

In March, we announced a beta for Ask Gemini in Drive. This feature is now generally available and has started rolling out to eligible Google Workspace and Google AI plans.

Google Drive isn’t just a place to store your work, it’s now the place to understand it. We’ve reimagined the experience with Gemini now offering a dedicated, immersive workspace designed for deep focus. You can now engage in high-context, multi-turn conversations to efficiently explore and understand content across Drive, Workspace apps, and the web.

Whether you are synthesizing years of client proposals or uncovering hidden customer trends, Ask Gemini in Drive provides a holistic view of your entire body of work.

Key features include:

  • Dedicated conversations: Engage in focused discussions about specific sets of files and folders. By grounding your questions in the relevant content, you get more precise, actionable answers.
  • Drive projects: Organize your work more effectively with Drive projects. This new feature in Drive allows you to curate related files and folders into a central, always up-to-date, and shared knowledge base, making it easier to manage complex workflows and keep your team aligned.
  • Persistent conversation history: Easily pick up where you left off. Your past chats are saved, allowing you to quickly revisit previous insights about specific folders or projects without starting over.
  • Secure and compliant: Ask Gemini in Drive and projects are built directly into the Drive architecture, it never copies or replicates your files. It honors your existing data protection and security controls, including access permissions, DLP policies, and IRM, ensuring Gemini only accesses content you are authorized to see.

Find and understand information across your Drive files, Workspace apps, and the entire internet

With this launch, we’re also expanding language support. Ask Gemini in Drive will roll out to all 29 languages currently supported in the Gemini side panel over the coming weeks (see the Rollout pace section below for more details).

Getting started

Rollout pace

Ask Gemini in Drive in English:

Ask Gemini in Drive in 28 additional languages:

Availability

  • Business: Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise: Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Consumer: Google AI Pro and Ultra
  • AI Add-ons: Google AI Pro for Education

Resources

Last year, we stopped allowing restricted access on specific files and folders within a shared folder in Google Drive, and instead required that restricted access be managed consistently via the limited access folder setting. With this update, all items with legacy restricted access will be automatically migrated to use the limited access setting instead. There will be no change to who can see or access the files.

After the migration to the limited access setting, any user can audit the files they own with limited access by using the Drive search operators owner:me is:limitedaccess.

Items that were automatically migrated will show limited access was applied by Google Drive.

Items with limited access applied will show the updated sharing experience.
Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more.
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more.

Rollout pace

  • Personal Google accounts: Available now
  • Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on April 9, 2026
  • Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on April 16, 2026

Availability

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

Resources



In September 2025, we launched ransomware detection and file restoration in beta to help organizations minimize the impact of malware attacks on personal computers. Today, we’re excited to share these two features are generally available with significant improvements in malware detection.

Compared to when the feature was in beta, we are now able to detect even more types of ransomware encryption and are able to do it faster. Our latest AI model is detecting 14x more infections, leading to even more comprehensive protection.

Thousands of users have tested file restoration, demonstrating that it’s scalable and reliable.

  • Ransomware detection: When users have Google Drive for desktop installed on their computers, file syncing will be paused when ransomware is detected. The user will see a notification appear on their computer. Admins will see an alert in the Admin console security center; notification emails will be delivered to both users and admins.
  • File restoration: Users are able to bulk restore their files to a previous version in Drive with ease, saving them time and money without paying a ransom. Users can select and restore multiple files prior to when ransomware infected their computer, making their files inaccessible.

Getting started

  • Admins:
    • Ransomware detection will be on by default for users in your organization. You can turn it on or off at the OU level by going to Admin console > Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Drive and Docs > Malware and Ransomware. If ransomware is detected for your users, admins will receive an email and get an alert in the Alert center.
    • Drive file restoration will be on by default. You can turn it on or off at Admin console > Apps > Google Workspace > Settings for Drive and Docs > Drive file restoration.
    • Install the latest version of Drive for desktop on user computers (v.114 or later) to enable the detection alerts (syncing will still be paused on older versions).
    • Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing ransomware detection and file restoration for your organization.

The Admin console setting for ransomware detection


The Admin console setting for Drive file restoration 


Email to admins when potential ransomware is detected


Admin alert in the Alert center with information on the potential ransomware detection



Alert detail on the ransomware detection


  • End users: The availability of this feature will depend on your admin’s settings. If turned on and ransomware is detected, you will see the alerts and access the interface below. Visit the Help Center to learn more about restoring files in bulk with Google Drive

End user alert in Drive for desktop when ransomware is detected


Interface to assist with file recovery

Rollout pace

Availability

  • File restoration
    • Available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts 
  • Ransomware detection
    • Business: Business Standard and Plus
    • Enterprise: Enterprise Starter, Standard and Plus
    • Education: Education Standard and Plus
    • Other Editions: Frontline Standard and Plus

Resources

Last year, we announced a smoother, more modern video player in the Google Drive Android app. This updated look and feel is now available when watching Drive videos on your iOS devices.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

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

On Chrome on your computer, you can now save PDFs directly to Drive without leaving the page, and easily get back to them later in the “Saved from Chrome” folder. Visit the Help Center to learn more.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

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

Resources

We're excited to announce a major improvement to Microsoft Office interoperability in Google Workspace: you can now edit Microsoft Office files that are password-protected, directly within Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

When a user attempts to open a protected file in Drive, they will be prompted to enter the password with the option to View or Edit. Selecting “Preview” opens the document in read-only Preview mode without removing the password. New with this launch is the option to Edit, which will open the file for editing in Docs/Sheets/Slides and remove the password from the file.


A user opening a password protected Microsoft Office file in Google Drive

This enables better interoperability between Workspace and Microsoft, allowing users for the first time to edit password protected files directly in Drive. Prior to this, users would have to download and rely on third party applications to remove passwords or edit password protected Microsoft files.

Getting started

Rollout pace

  • Rapid Release domains: Full rollout (1–4 days for feature visibility) starting on January 13, 2026, and ending on January 16, 2026
  • Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1-3 days for feature visibility) starting on January 19, 2026, and ending January 21, 2026

Availability

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

Resources

What’s changing

We previously announced an open beta for migrating files from Dropbox to Google Drive in the New Data Migration service. This functionality is now generally available.

Admins can use the New Data Migration service to migrate data from Dropbox business accounts, including files, folders and associated permissions, helping organizations transition to Google Workspace quickly and easily.

Example of a running Dropbox migration

Additional details

  • You can migrate data from up to 150 Dropbox users or team folders at a time to MyDrive or Google shared drives respectively.
  • You can find comprehensive reporting on migration progress, including site and file counts (migrated/skipped). You can also export migration reports for error investigation and troubleshooting. 
  • Delta updates are available to migrate newly added or updated files.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Available for Google Workspace:

  • Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Essentials Starter, Enterprise Essentials, and Enterprise Essentials Plus
  • Education Fundamentals, Standard, Plus
  • Nonprofits

Resources

What’s changing

Google Drive is making significant improvements to the viewing experience of third party file formats, such as PDFs, videos, images, and audio files. With this launch, we are modernizing the interface to include:

  • A new left rail for PDFs which will include a table of contents (where applicable) and thumbnails for easier navigation of documents
  • A new file menu
  • A new toolbar and app bar
  • An option to search by transcript when looking at a video

This modernization will make it easier for Google Workspace users to navigate documents, and will be particularly useful for large documents. 


New Drive Web Viewing Experience for PDFs

New Drive Web Viewing Experience for PDFs

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature will be on by default. There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature will be on by default. You will see it when you open a supported file format in a new tab in Google Drive on the web. Use our Help Center to learn more about how to use Google Drive

Rollout pace

Availability

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

Resources

What’s happening

Earlier this year, we introduced Gemini “nudges” at the top of folders in Google Drive, and we’re now making it even easier to get the context of your folders at a glance. Gemini will now proactively provide insights about the files within a folder, right at the top of the folder view. This makes it easier to quickly understand what’s inside without having to open individual files. For a more in-depth look, you can click “Explore with Gemini” to get a full summary or ask follow up questions in the Gemini side panel. 

Get quick insights on your Google Drive folders with Gemini

This feature is designed to help you save time and stay organized by providing at-a-glance insights into your folders. It is an evolution of the previous version of folder nudges, moving from simple suggestions to proactive, intelligent insights. This feature is currently available in English only.

Getting started

  • Admins: To enable this feature for your users, you can turn on the default personalization setting for smart features in the Admin console.
  • End users: This feature will be ON by default for end users who have smart features and personalization turned on in their Google Workspace apps. To disable, you can “collapse” the “insights by Gemini” section of a folder. You can also disable this feature by turning off smart features entirely. 

Rollout pace

Availability

Available for Google Workspace:

  • Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus

Also available to:

  • Google One AI Premium
  • Google AI Pro for Education

What’s changing

Last year, we announced the ability to automatically generate captions for English-language videos in Google Drive. Today, we’re expanding this feature to support 27 additional languages.

This update makes video content stored in Drive more accessible, inclusive, and easier to understand for all users, especially those who are deaf or hard of hearing, are in a noisy environment, or speak a different primary language. Automatically generated captions also save time by eliminating the need for manual caption creation and make it easier to search for video content.

When an eligible user uploads a video to Drive, this feature will automatically detect if the video is in one of the supported languages and generate captions for it.

The new languages supported are:

  • Arabic
  • Czech
  • Dutch
  • Filipino
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hungarian
  • Indonesian
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Malay
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian
  • Vietnamese
Support for Chinese is coming soon.

Getting started

  • Admins: This feature expansion will be ON by default for all eligible organizations and will respect your existing settings for automatically-generated captions. No new admin control is being added. You can control this feature for your organization at the domain, OU, or group level. Admins can choose to:
    • Have captions generated automatically when a user uploads a video (default)
    • Turn on the feature, but require users to request captions for each video
    • Disable automatically-generated captions entirely
  • End users: For end users at organizations where automatic generation on upload is enabled, captions in these new languages will be generated automatically upon video upload. No action is required. End users who need to request captions (including users with personal Google accounts) can generate captions by doing the following: right-click the video > Manage caption tracks > Add new caption tracks. Visit the Help Center to learn more about automatically generated captions

Rollout pace

  • Available now

Availability

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

Resources


What’s changing

Beginning today, a Drive item’s applied data classification values will appear across all views on Drive on the web, including Home, My Drive, Shared Drives, and Drive search results. Previously, users needed to either navigate to Details or open the file to know a Drive item’s classification state. Now, users will immediately see the applied classification values when navigating throughout the Drive product.

For any particular item, the highest ranked label with a badged list field will display the applied option. For items with more than one label applied, an additional label count icon will appear next to the badged value displaying the number of additional labels applied to the item. For items where only data classification labels without badged lists are applied, the Label name of the highest rank classification label will appear next to the file title with a non-colored badge treatment. It’s important to note that only options from badged lists will display within Workspace surfaces; a label without a badged list will display the label name. 

Hovering over either the badged label value or the additional count icon will display additional applied labels in a tooltip. Clicking a label value will immediately open the Labels section of File Details. 

Data classification labels visible in more places across Google Drive

Getting started

  • Admins: 
    • If you've been using classification labels, there are no changes to your experience beyond improved end user visibility of applied labels. 
    • There is no admin control for this feature; however, you are able to adjust whether a label contains a badged option list and specify a color scheme within the Label Manager. 
  • End users: No action needed. Labels will start to appear on Drive items across all supported views. 

Rollout pace

  • Available now

Availability

Data classification labels in Drive are available to Google Workspace:

  • Frontline Starter and Standard
  • Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Education Standard and Education Plus
  • Nonprofits
  • Essentials, Enterprise Essentials, and Enterprise Essentials Plus

Resources

What’s changing

Beginning today, the new Data Migration Service can be used to migrate files and folders from Dropbox to Google Drive. This allows organizations to transition easily from Dropbox to Google Workspace, by copying over files, folders and associated permissions securely. 

You can start and complete a migration in a few simple steps:

  • Connect to your Dropbox business account from which you want to copy data.
  • Specify which users or team folders you want to copy from and which user’s MyDrive or Google shared drive should contain the copied data.
  • Specify users and groups whose permissions should be copied.
Example of a running Dropbox to Google Drive migration
Example of a running Dropbox to Google Drive migration

Additional details

  • You can migrate data from up to 100 Dropbox users or team folders at a time to MyDrive or Google shared drives respectively.
  • You can find comprehensive reporting on migration progress, including site and file counts (migrated/skipped). You can also export migration reports for error investigation and troubleshooting. 
  • Delta updates are available to migrate newly added or updated files.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Available for Google Workspace:

  • Business Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Enterprise Starter, Standard, and Plus
  • Essentials Starter, Enterprise Essentials, and Enterprise Essentials Plus
  • Education Fundamentals, Standard, Plus
  • Nonprofits

Resources


What’s happening

We’re introducing AI-powered audio overviews for PDFs in Google Drive.

This new Gemini for Google Workspace feature allows your users to instantly convert long, text-heavy PDFs—such as industry reports, contracts, or lengthy meeting transcripts—into a conversational, podcast-style audio summary. With just one click, a new audio file is saved directly to their Drive. This feature is powered by the same underlying technology as NotebookLM’s popular Audio Overview feature.


Add GIF

In today's fast-paced environment, dedicating time to read long documents can be a significant challenge. Audio overviews solve this by allowing users to absorb critical information while they are multitasking. Users can listen to the summaries from anywhere they can access their Drive files, whether they’re commuting, working out, or doing chores.

This feature can help your users:


  • Boost efficiency by allowing users to quickly grasp the main points of a long document in a two- to 10-minute audio summary,
  • Improve accessibility by providing an alternative format for consuming content, and
  • Enhance preparation by making it easier to quickly review materials before meetings or client presentations.
Once the audio overview is generated on a desktop, the user receives an email notification that the file is ready. The audio file is automatically saved to a new "Audio overviews" folder in their Drive, which they can then access from any mobile or desktop device.

Please note: At launch, this feature supports English-language PDFs only.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Available for Google Workspace

  • Business Standard and Plus 
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus 
Also available to

  • Google One AI Pro and AI Ultra
  • Google AI Ultra for Business
  • Google AI Pro for Education 

Resources

What’s changing

Earlier this year, we announced a series of changes to AI classification for Google Drive, including a revamped user interface, an on-demand model training process, and support for multiple custom-trained models. Today, we’re excited to share the next step in the product’s evolution: Gemini-based models for data classification, now available in closed beta.  

This feature leverages Gemini models to apply data classification labels to files in Google Drive. To date, AI classification requires admins to identify and manually label training files for the AI model to learn the types of data associated with each data classification level. With this new capability, Gemini models offers admins another method to set up AI classification by eliminating the need for manual model training, replacing the process with administrator-defined instructions or prompts.

Gemini models interpret prompts, evaluate files, and apply appropriate data classification labels based on the provided instructions. For files labeled by Gemini, editors and owners on those files with the appropriate label permissions will have the opportunity to review and accept or modify the automatically applied label. 

Administrators maintain full control.

Administrators maintain full control. They select the label, provide instructions via a prompt, and scope the audience whose files are being evaluated. Audit logs capture when files are labeled or any user acceptance or modification of a Gemini-applied label occurs.  

Who’s impacted

Admins 

Why it matters

Data classification is a critical activity for organizations that are conscious about data protection, compliance, and reporting. However, data classification can also be challenging to put into practice, particularly when it comes to accurately classifying files at scale.  Using AI for data classification aims to address this problem by using a model’s ability to reason to achieve a high degree of data classification accuracy, at scale. 

Rollout pace

  • Closed Beta - customers must be manually enrolled to begin testing.

Getting started

  • Admins:  For customers interested in testing, we kindly ask that you share your interest by filling out this form
    • Please note – during this phase of product validation, enrollment will be limited. Our intent is to gradually onboard customers leading up to an Open Beta. 
    • Ideal closed-beta participants will be organizations with existing data classification programs, who have the capacity to actively test the models and are willing to engage with the Workspace product team to provide direct feedback on their experience. 
    • If you are selected for the Closed Beta, you will receive an email detailing specific onboarding instructions. 
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

Availability

Available to Google Workspace:

  • Enterprise Plus 

Resources