Google shares transition plans for unified desktop file syncing Drive app

Google introduced its plans to transition customers of its shopper file syncing desktop service, Backup and Sync, onto a new unified app that each customers and enterprise shoppers can use known as Drive for desktop. Google plans to start out onboarding users next week on July 19th, 2021, and encourages individuals who used Backup and Sync to make the swap by the top of September, earlier than getting locked out on October 1st.

Backup and Sync customers should transition to the brand new app (a renamed version of Google’s enterprise file syncing software program), however enterprise shoppers who’re already utilizing Drive File Stream (aka Drive for desktop) needs to be good to go, Google says. The objective with consolidating the apps, Google says, is to create “a powerful and unified sync client” with the perfect options from each shopper and enterprise companies that needs to be extra easy to make use of and simpler for IT groups to handle. Notably, it’s additionally a reversal of Google’s complicated choice to separate up Google Drive on desktop into two apps in 2017.

According to Google’s blog post explaining the desktop Drive consumer, the app needs to be fairly acquainted to anybody who used Google’s earlier companies. Drive will provide easy accessibility to recordsdata and photographs saved within the cloud, and sync no matter recordsdata you select within the background so that they’re all the time updated. Google says the app can sync exterior storage units like flash drives to Drive, mirror recordsdata between Drive and native recordsdata in your desktop pc, and allow you to select whether or not you retailer particular person photographs and movies in Drive or Google Photos.

Google will start transitioning customers of Backup and Sync subsequent Monday, July nineteenth. Here’s the next transition timeline for customers, from Google:

July nineteenth, 2021: Backup and Sync will assist a guided circulation to assist customers transition on to Drive for desktop

August 18th, 2021: Any customers nonetheless on Backup and Sync will begin to obtain in-product notifications prompting them to transition to Drive for desktop.

October 1st, 2021: Any customers nonetheless on Backup and Sync after that time will not be capable to register to Backup and Sync. To proceed syncing with Drive and/or Google Photos, customers might want to transition to Drive for desktop.