Bad news, Google Drive fans – the app is going away. But relax – there’s a replacement (two, actually). And it's an improvement.

Google Doc App For Ipad
Google Drive App Not Working On Mac

You might have seen the pop-up below, saying that Google Drive is going away. Well, the deadline is quickly approaching: you have until March 11 to install Drive File Stream or Google Backup and Sync, the replacement apps by Google.

That’s right. The old Google Drive app is going away, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have to migrate off of the popular cloud storage app or move to a different service.

Jun 13, 2019 Google Docs is available on all devices and platforms; all you need is an internet connection and a web browser (or, in the case of mobile, the applicable apps). Google does the rest and handles the brunt of the heavy lifting while it runs the software in the cloud. Download Google Docs: Sync, Edit, Share and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. ‎Create, edit, and collaborate on the go with the Google Docs app. Work together in real time. Share documents with your team. Edit, comment and add action items in real time. Never lose changes or previous versions of your document with version.

The replacement app will depend on whether you are a business or consumer user. Right now, both groups are using the same Google Drive app. However, they are splitting into separate desktop apps.

Business users (using the full GSuite of apps) should click to install Drive File Stream. This allows the same functionality as before, but with much needed bandwidth and storage improvements. Support has been added for the syncing of Team Drives. Files are accessed on demand, to use less storage space on hard drives.

The app is available for both Windows and Mac users, however the location of Drive has changed. For Mac users, Drive is found in Finder under Devices. In Windows, users can find their files as a mounted drive in My Computer.

Consumer users of the free Google products (such as Drive, Gmail, Calendar, etc.) will be directed to download Google Backup and Sync. This makes it easy to access, sync and backup both files and photos from external SD cards, such as from digital cameras, GoPros and drones.

You’ll still be using the same Google Drive interface on the web, and those synced photos will be there. Previously consumers needed two separate apps, one for Google Drive, and one for Photos. This new single app replaces both of those.

Google Backup and Sync is available for both Windows and Mac users.

The mobile apps you are using for Google Drive will stay the same, just as the web version of Drive will. The only change is the desktop sync apps.

If you’ve been unsure or hesitating, it’s perfectly OK to download these replacement apps. It’s a positive change and both apps contain new features that will save both time and hard drive space.

Looking to master Google Drive? Watch our full course, Google Drive Essential Training.

Other courses you might be interested in are:

Google Doc App For Ipad

Last week, Google announced it has added free speech-to-text capabilities to Google Docs (Google calls it Voice Typing). This would have been huge news 20 years ago, yet when Google unveiled it, it was only described in a single paragraph in a middle of a larger blog entry. In a world with Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google Now, a free speech-to-text service that works on multiple computing platforms may not seem like big news anymore.

Google Drive App Not Working On Mac

Voice Typing is different, though; it’s kind of a built-in version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking (for those of you who remember and/or still use that program). Voice Typing works in Chrome on the desktop, as well as the Docs apps for Apple iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android.

Here’s how it works: To start voice typing on an iOS device, tap the microphone icon to the left of the spacebar near the bottom of the screen. Tap the microphone icon on the right side of the screen above the on-screen keyboard to start Voice Typing on an Android phone or tablet. If you want to voice type on a Mac or Windows PC, you need to use Google Docs in a Chrome web browser. Then, select Tools > Voice Typing. You will see a microphone icon appear with the tool tip “Click to speak” appear in the browser screen near your Docs document.

Google Docs Voice Typing currently supports 48 languages, including regional variants of Chinese, English, Portuguese, and Spanish. You do not need to perform any kind of training before using Voice Typing, and it doesn’t appear to need a special microphone. For this article, I used the built-in microphones of my Dell Windows notebook, a Nexus 6, and an iPhone 6+ to test Google’s speech-to-text.

Voice Typing does require you speak words to add punctuation: “Period”, “Comma”, “Exclamation point”, “Question mark”, “New line”, and “New paragraph.” Unlike dedicated speech-to-text systems, Voice Typing does not have a way to correct or change text using just your voice. With Voice Typing left turned on, you must use your keyboard (physical or on-screen) to make changes to text.

In addition to my regular voice, I tested how well Voice Typing would work on truly continuous speech by playing a Stephen Colbert video on YouTube into the microphone of my Nexus 6 phone running the Google Docs app. Google Docs recorded 288 words using Voice Typing by the time I pressed the Pause button. It looked like it did a credible job of performing speech-to-text of a person speaking relatively fast. My rough estimate is that it was about 85 to 90% correct. And, of course, there is no punctuation, since you need to actually speak the punctuation marks for it to appear in the document.

One tip: Voice Typing doesn’t like it when you swear. For example, If I say, “What the f***?”, it will censor the text of the censored word. This was, appropriately enough, first noted in a blog about the linguistics of swearing.

I started, but didn’t finish, writing this article using Voice Typing. Unless you are a smooth extemporaneous speaker (I am not), it is not the fastest way to write more than a few sentences of text. And, like all speech-to-text systems, it works best in a relatively quiet environment. I’m not sure if I will use Voice Typing regularly. I can see myself using it to make a few notes on my phone. And it may be interesting to see how well it performs in an interview situation with multiple people.

Google Doc App On Mac