Have tons of files in Google Drive? Finding the one you need should now be easier than ever.
Google on Wednesday began rolling out a “new search experience” for its cloud storage service. For instance, you can now narrow your search to a specific file type — like PDFs, text documents, spreadsheets, photos, presentations, or videos — right from the search box on iOS, Android, and the Web.
If that doesn’t help you find what you need, you can also open advanced search directly from the search box. This will let you look up a file by the date it was modified, specific words it contains, or with whom it was shared. To get more specific results, you can also now search for shared files by owner using their name or email address.”Several behind-the-scenes improvements give your search queries even better results than they did before,” Google Drive Group Product Manager Steen Andersson wrote in a blog post. “This is all part of an ongoing effort to make Drive the easiest place to find your files.”
Meanwhile, Google Drive also now takes advantage of the 3D Touch feature in Apple’s latest iPhones to let you access recent files or search from the home screen. Apple device users can also now search Drive using the iOS search bar without even opening the Drive app.
Google said the new features are rolling out now and should make their way to everyone over “the coming weeks.”
If you use Google Apps at work, meanwhile, a new feature known as Data Loss Prevention is intended to make sure that confidential information isn’t emailed to the wrong people. As TechCrunch notes, a company could ban or quarantine emails with Social Security or credit card numbers, for example, or set up customized parameters.