Google is making some much-needed improvements to Drive today, but not the app. We're talking about the web interface. Even if you're primarily using Drive on Android, you'll end up visiting in the browser on occasion. When you do, you'll see a refined UI and much better file downloads.
Here's what Google says is coming in the update.
- You can now compress and download Drive items into multiple 2GB zip files. Files have an improved name structure, for example: drive-download-20160516T125832Z.zip for the first file and drive-download-20160516T125832Z-2.zip for subsequent archives.
- Better Google Forms handling.
- Empty folders are now included in the zip.
The 2GB size limit on large downloads was a real bummer if you needed to grab a lot of files. Now, Drive will split downloads into multiple archives. You'll also get empty folders included when you download an entire directory, thus preserving the hierarchy you've set up.
As for those UI changes, Google isn't listing them. We've spotted the following tweaks, though. If words aren't your thing, see above.
- Revised logo
- New search box design
- "New" button is in the toolbar now
- The primary color is now blue
- New icons in the side panel
- Minor positioning/sizing changes for the toolbar
All the new features and changes should be live for everyone in between one and three days.
Source: Google