Google Drive gets a makeover: Here’s what’s new

Google has been giving its family of apps a Material You makeover for quite some time now. More recently, the company has rolled out its Material You design to its Docs, Sheets, Slides and Translate apps. Now, the company has announced that it is redesigning its Google Drive app to offer a better experience on tablets. Also Read – Twitter Blue is now available globally: Check price, features

The company in a post on its Google Workspace Update blog wrote that it is updating its Google Drive app for tablets to make better use of a tablet’s bigger screen. “Google Drive app for tablet displays through several modernizations, including shifting the navigation bar to the side, optimizing visual components to take advantage of the larger screen, and making it easier to see file details for a selected file,” the company wrote in a post. Also Read – Not just Pixel phones, Windows laptops too are affected by aCropalypse bug

What’s changing in Google Drive

In essence, Google has updated the Google Drive app on tablets such that its aesthetics match the kind of design language that Google has adopted in Gmail on PCs and other apps that have got a Material You design. This means better use of space and similar design language across its apps. Also Read – Google is opening its ChatGPT rival Bard to public, but you may not be able to use it yet

“We’re rolling out improvements to the formatting and customization options for tables of contents in Google Docs. We’re also reorganizing the options included in the table properties sidebar in Docs to make it easier for you to find and utilize table formatting options,” the company added.

In this case, Google has added a menu bar on the left side that gives access to the hamburger menu and the Add New button on the top. These options are followed by the Home, Starred, Shared and Files options. In the older design, these options were available at the menu bar at the bottom.

Apart from this, the Suggested and Notifications tabs have been compressed in a way that the screen includes more tiles on the top to make better use of the space. Also, the Help, Settings and Profile options have been shifted to the top along with the Search Bar that sits right on top of the Suggested and Notifications tabs.

It is worth noting that this design is quite similar to Google Drive’s web browser-based interface. The only difference between the tablet-based and PC-based interface of Google Drive is that menu on the left side is slightly more elaborate as it includes options such as Computers (for syncing with the smartphone app), Recents, Trash and Storage options. Also, the screen has more tiles or files horizontally based on the available area. In addition to this, the menu on the top right corner also includes two additional buttons, one of which gives instant access to Google apps, while the other one enables users to turn on the Offline mode with a single click.

Google Docs redesign availability

As far as availability is concerned, Google has already rolled out the update to all its users.

---

---