To share a file, open your Google Drive folder, right-click on a file that you want to share and select Google Drive → Share. What if you want to share a file on your cloud with others? Google Drive has a sharing feature specially designed for this purpose.
In the Preferences window you can choose which local folders to sync with your Google Drive, whether to sync your Google Docs files, start Google Drive client automatically with Windows and if you want to use a proxy or direct internet connection. The same right-click menu of the system tray icon can be used to open Google Drive in your web browser, open desktop client preferences and buy more storage etc. You can right-click on this icon and select Open Google Drive Folder from the right-click menu to open the Google Drive folder on your local hard disk. The Google Drive desktop client also installs an icon in the notification area (system tray) of Windows. Similarly, if you copy, create, change or delete any file in this folder, the operations would be immediately synced to your online Google Drive storage. All the changes to your Google Drive storage will reflect in your local Google Drive folder on your hard disk. By default this folder in Windows is %UserProfile%Google Drive. After the installation, you need to login to your Google account in the desktop client window.Īfter you have successfully logged into your Google account through the Google Drive desktop client, it creates a special folder which is automatically synchronized to your Google Drive. The installation process might take 2-3 minutes.
The downloaded installer for Google Drive is just a bootstrap, it connects to the Google servers to download the latest version of Google Drive client. When you visit your Google Drive account in a web browser, you would see a link to download these desktop clients.
Other than using your Google Drive through a web browser, you can also install Google Drive clients for PC or Mac. These apps are able to access your Google Drive, edit your documents and save them back in the cloud.
Now you can select apps from a wide range shown in the gallery and connect them with Google Drive. To connect these apps, click on the Create button and then select Connect more apps. The third party apps add much more functionality to Google Drive and files created by them can be saved directly to your Drive account. In addition, Google Drive comes packed with cloud apps that let you create new documents of different types (document, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing and form).īut Google Drive does not stop just there, you can also connect more apps created by third parties to your Google Drive. You can upload entire folder from your hard disk too, but this requires that you use Google Chrome web browser.
You will get five gigabytes of free storage space in your drive.Īfter signing in to your Google Drive account, you can create new folders by clicking on the Create button and upload files to your cloud space by clicking on the upward icon next to the Create button. If you have an account for other Google services like Gmail, Youtube etc., then you can use the same username and password. To start using the Google Drive service, just point your web browser to the Google Drive website and login using your Google account username and password. In competition with other cloud services, Google Drive is also offering apps for Android, iPhone, iPad and desktop clients for Windows and Mac. If you require more space, then you can pay for it and get as much as sixteen terabyte of cloud space. Google Drive is offering five gigabytes of storage space for free. Google Drive, the free cloud storage service from Google, has finally arrived after years of rumors and waiting.