Google Drive for iOS and Android has becoming pretty important for me. Whether I’m taking notes or writing up a post, I’ve used it to share my docs with colleagues from the road.
Today, the team announced a few new features to help speed up sharing and collaboration, which if you’re not on your desktop can seem slow at times.
Yeah, Google Drive sends share requests and invites to docs through email. Ugh.
Have no fear, though. Drive for iOS and Android are getting sharing notifications. As soon as files or folders are shared with you, you’ll get a mobile notification on your app of choice. Tap the notification and you’ll be sent right to the doc. That’s pretty huge.
On Drive for Android, you can now ask for access to files or folders with a single tap. With notifications hitting iOS and Android so that access can be granted quickly. I’ve lost hours to the back and forth of “can you add me to this doc?” “sure!” “can you please add me to this doc, don’t forget!” “crap, sorry!”
Last feature of the day, you can now preview files on Android without a Google account. Something you can do on the desktop, but super handy when you’re in a not-logged-in-state. Let’s hope all of this comes to iOS too. Otherwise…what the hell is the point?
Everything’s rolling out over the next week or so, the team says.
