Your Google Drive is in the cloud, but you can also install the desktop and mobile application to access your files from your computer, smartphone, tablet, or other Android or iOS mobile device, in addition to the online web interface at http://drive.google.com. Google Drive's built-in sync capability ensures that your files, folders, and Google documents are the same on all your devices.
- Google Drive on the Web
browsers
Enter the Google Drive web address http://drive.google.com, to access the web interface.
- Google Drive desktop
clients
Google Drive Windows Desktop Client Step-by-step installation instructions:
- Go to http://drive.google.com.
- Click the Download Google Drive for your PC button.
- Open googledrivesync.exe
to automatically install and start Google Drive on your PC. (You may receive a
warning that Google Drive is an application downloaded from the Internet. Click
the Open
button.)
- Enter your Google Account username and password in the window
that opens. This will be the account associated with Google Drive for your PC.
- Complete the installation package
instructions.
- Launch Google Drive for your PC from the
Start menu. Drag files and folders into your Google Drive folder to begin
syncing items to My
Drive (part of Google Drive on the web).
- Go to http://drive.google.com.
- Click the Download Google Drive
for your Mac button.
- Open installgoogledrive.dmg.
- Open the installation file and
drag the Google Drive icon to your Applications
folder.
- Open Google Drive from your
Applications folder. (You may receive a warning that Google Drive is an
application downloaded from the Internet. Click the Open button.)
- Enter your Google Account username
and password
in the window that opens. This will be the account associated with Google Drive
for your Mac.
- Complete the installation package
instructions.
- Launch Google Drive for your Mac
from the toolbar. Drag files and folders into your Google Drive folder to begin
syncing items to My
Drive (part of Google Drive on the web).
Follow these steps to enable offline access on your computer. Keep in mind that offline access is available only when you’re using Chrome or a Chrome OS device. If you use Chrome OS, there's no need to complete these steps, as offline access is already set up for you.
1. From drive.google.com in your Chrome browser, click More on the left-hand side of the screen.
2. Select Offline.
3. Setting up offline access is a two-step process. First, click the blue button that says Get the app. If you already have the app installed, you won't need to complete this step.
4. You'll be taken to the Chrome web store. Click Add to Chrome in the upper-right corner of the browser window.
5. Once the app is installed, you'll be taken to a Chrome page with the Google Drive app icon. To return to Drive, click the Google Drive icon.
6. On the right side of the dialog on the Offline Docs page, click the blue button that says Enable Offline. At this point, it also works to click on the gear icon in the top-right corner of your main Drive view and select Enable Offline to set up offline access.
Disabling Google Drive offline access:
If you no longer want to access your Drive offline, click the gear icon in the upper-right corner of your browser window and select Disable Offline.
- Google Drive Mobile Apps
(iOS and Android)
Google documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings are viewable on the mobile browsers of most phones that support HTML.
Google Drive/Docs fully support editing on the following mobile platforms:
- Android
devices version 2.1 and above
- iPhone
and iPad devices with iOS 3.0 and up
- Mobile
browsers on earlier Android platforms such as Eclair may work, but these aren't
fully supported for Google Docs
Supported 65 languages: Mobile editing is supported for the following Google Docs languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, English (UK), Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lituanian, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukranian, and Vietnamese. - Your mobile browser will reflect the language settings that you’ve set
in your Google Docs settings on your desktop computer (not from your mobile
device).
Supported versions of Google Drive App for Android
To download and install the Google Drive app for Android, make sure your Android device version is supported:
- For phones, you need Android version 2.1 or higher.
- For tablets, you need Android version 3.0 or
higher.
- To check your version, go to Settings and select
About phone or About tablet. Your version number is listed under
“Android version.”
Installing Google Drive App for Android:
If you want to access Google Docs and Google Drive from your Android device, download the Drive app in Google Play. If you haven’t yet tried Drive on your desktop computer, you can get access through the Drive app on your Android device.
- Tap the Google Play icon on your screen.
- Find and
install the application called Google Drive.
- On your
phone or tablet home screen, click the Drive
app icon.
Updating the Google Docs app to Google Drive will remove existing Docs shortcuts from your home screen. After your update is complete, you can create shortcuts again.
Adding a Google Drive widget to your home screen:
You can add a widget to your device's home screen to access the Drive app more quickly on the go. The widget also allows you to go directly to your Starred files, Create a document with one click, or take pictures with your camera and store them in Drive immediately.
- For Android 4.0 and above: Tap the All
Apps icon and select Widgets at the top of your screen. Swipe left or
right to move between screens and find the Drive widget. Long-press to pick it
up and drag it to the desired spot on your device Home screen.
- For earlier Android versions: Long-press an
empty spot on your Home screen, and tap Widgets in the pop-up menu.
Swipe left or right to find the Drive widget, tap it with your finger, and
click Select.
Installing Google Drive App for iOS devices:
Before you start using Google Drive on iPod, iPhone and iPad devices, download the app and request access to Google Drive:
- Go to the App Store
on your iPod, iPhone or iPad.
- Search the App Store for "Google Drive."
- Find the search result with the Drive icon
.
- Select and install
the app.
- Open the app and sign into Google Drive
- Google Drive add-on apps
The Chrome Web Store now has apps that we can run right on our desktop! There are many useful apps from various categories that run from the Google Drive. - Google Drive Offline
Google DriveTips and best practices:
Below are the most common action shortcuts and tips for handling Google Drive and Google Docs.
- Here's a list of helpful keyboard shortcuts to navigate
Google Drive:
To navigate your list of files and folders, press the Down and Up arrows.
To open a selected item, press O or Enter.
To move to the Search box, press Forward slash.
To open the Google Drive keyboard shortcuts overlay, press Shift + Forward slash. To close the overlay, press Escape. - Here are shortcuts to go to different locations in Google
Drive:
To go to a file and folder list, press G then L.
To go to the navigation panel, press G then N. Press the Down or Up arrow to navigate to different views.
To go to My Drive, press G then F. Press the Down or Up arrow to move to different folders. If a folder has folders nested within, use the Right arrow to navigate through those subfolders.
To go to the details pane, press D.