Google Drive Reviews

by ShawnDH12

I’ve been using Google Drive for many years and have been very impressed with its capabilities, especially when it comes to collaboration using Google docs. Synchronization seems real-time and I’ve never had a version control issue like MS. However, recently on iOS 15 I’ve noticed background activity draining my battery when I haven’t actually opened GoogleDrive in months. My phone was at 30% 5:30am this morning from last night which I thought was strange. I went back to sleep for two more hours. With no use, screen off, no messages no calls, literally no phone usage, my battery dropped to 19%! I look at the battery usage by app and Google drive has been running for 5hrs 19min and I have not even opened GoogleDrive for at least a month. I like the Drive app but if they don’t fix this I’m going to remove GoogleDrive all together and just use the web interface.

I updated GoogleDrive , turned off background refresh for GoogleDrive and still found 5hr of activity last night when I have not used GoogleDrive at all. I just deleted GoogleDrive ! Goodbye Google Drive.

by M_seattle

Drive has become totally useless on my 7plus. Started having streaming issues about 6 months ago. Most videos won’t play or stop part way through. I struggle to open photos most of the time. I don’t know what happened. Phone has been reset. Completely reset to factory. App has been deleted more than once and reinstalled. Every successive update gets worse and worse.
I really think the reason is competition. Regardless of the numbers of Apple users, Google just doesn’t care as a priority about non-Android phones and making sure compatibility is there. These issues have been going on for so long I honestly feel like Google has just abandoned support for iPhone.
As I was told from one Google employee, Drive is not meant to stream content (even though it’s my own and I PAY for storage). It’s simply meant as cloud storage.
I have gone from limited use to now, after the latest update, not being able to stream any video or even open a photo from my account. This isn’t some third party created app...this is Google. I seriously can’t understand how this is possible.

by Gtw145

GoogleDrive is a total struggle
I only use to store 1 resume then I needed to update the resume so I put the new up . I tried to delete the old one but after it claims it’s deleted it’s not the next day it still there, I deleted it again and witnessed it the trash then flush the trash . I waited 48 hours old one still there so my only hope I thought was to rename to new but then when I sent it for a job they thought it look suspicious so they avoided it . I then tried renaming the old one then the next day the change didn’t affect the file. After emailing the fake support countless times with no help . I started feeling like I was being PUNKED so I went looking for another storage. My lord I found tons of them and they all offer more storage than DRIVE and integrated so well with my device. I have now deleted the Google drive and I am glad I did due to people spam links from bad people drives then sending them in emails to get them involved. Now is a not a good time to have it . After 15 years of problems with any google products I have never gotten any help from support. Do do they even exits ? I know they have the community which it not a good place for help from unqualified people . My new year’s resolution for 22 is close everything associated with google and make my life easier

by Shadowoman

There’s no way for me to get my Google Photos onto Google Drive... I’d have to manually save all the hundreds of thousands of photos to my phone or device AND THEN re-download them to Google Drive. What am I paying $100 a year for?!?! And I just spent 4 months HAND transferring millions of files from DROPBOX to GOOGLE.... I can’t believe it.... Why did they get rid of that feature?! Google Drive and Google Photos should be connected. It’s absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to organize photos. And considering I take a crap ton of photos, I really need something that can save and organize my photos safely.
I also thought that using Google Drive would make it easier to share things. But, it doesn’t. I still have to share things through Google Drive/Google Photos and if people don’t have that, they can’t see it. What’s the difference between Google Drive/Google Photos and DROPBOX?! Honestly, I wish I would have never switched to Google Drive/Google Photos :( Dropbox is better... But after spending months transferring every single files and picture by hand, manually.. I don’t feel like going back to Dropbox :(

by BrandontheViking

I’ll preface this by saying that I don’t know if this is a Google problem or Apple problem. I don’t really care. I’ve been a Drive subscriber for some years now (TB level) and I’ve had this problem with multiple iPhones. When transferring images from iPhone to Google Drive, the process continues to randomly crash/stop causing incomplete transfers. I’ve gone as far as putting my phone in Airplane mode and WiFi only, shutting all other processes/apps, and let it sit. I’m pulling over 200MB download and over 10MB up. Data does not seem to be the issue. Currently running the 12 Pro Max. Hardly think it’s a hardware issue. I’d like to see this get fixed since it’s been happening for at least 5 years. My current work around is to manually transfer my images to my computer and then upload them to Google Drive. This seems to be a dumb solution for 2022. I can’t reliably backup a single trips worth of photos. Would be nice to transfer a couple hundred photos without these types of issues.

by Cameron0208

I absolutely love how cheap Google Drive is. It’s wonderful to have the option to offload files from my various devices for practically nothing.

That being said, GoogleDrive, just like many other google apps - both desktop and mobile - is absolutely awful. It suffers the same fate as most of their other apps - terrible navigation, not intuitive, convoluted processes to do anything, and a host of other issues. I’m not sure who’s making the UX decisions at Google - it seems like it may be Helen Keller - but they should be canned. Nothing is where it should be, or where one would think it is. I’ve had GoogleDrive for years and I still can’t navigate through it without making multiple errors. There is no rhyme or reason to 99% of the design choices in GoogleDrive, or if there is, I’d love to know what those rhymes and reasons are.

Maybe it’s some conspiracy where Google makes their apps really difficult to use so that people then have to do a google search so that they can figure out how to work google’s abysmal apps.

by Sam J-V

I overall really like the functionality of drive. There are just a few kind of UI and workflow things that I'd really love to see implemented. It would be great to have a more customizable storage system where you weren't limited to the different macro-tabs like home, starred, shared, and files. It would be cool if we could add our own to make drive the most optimum file storage system for us. It would also be great if there was a way to enable those same tabs, just in different iterations for different file types, so that I could just swipe over to another screen and see all of my starred and shared mp4 files, swipe again to see PDFS, and again to see JPEGs and PSD's or something like that. Additionally, it would be amazing if the download functionality was less cumbersome. I'd love to be able to open the share sheet, and just have the normal iPad menu system options of saving to files or doing all that other stuff. Most importantly, please make it possible to do things like download and move files off drive in bulk. There is nothing more annoying that having pictures of pages of a book and having to download and move each one individually because the function of the Drive's share sheet changes depending on wether or not multiple files are selected. Thanks!

by Pastel 🦋 Girl

Yes you saw, I gave GoogleDrive 4 stars. You guys are lucky because most of the time I give 2. Sooooo I have a suggestion

𝗙𝗜𝗡𝗔𝗟 𝗗𝗘𝗟𝗘𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡: I am so annoyed by how short deletion is. 30 days. One time I had something SUPER IMPORTANT saved for the next month. My sister DELETED IT. Then a few days later it told me “ October 13 your trash bin will be emptied” I just Xed it out because I look carefully what I don’t need before I put it in the trash. A month later i was going to turn in my SUPER IMPORTANT COLLEGE ESSAY, but there was a problem I went to google classroom and simply searched the name of the file. It didn’t show up. So I when to my drive and searched up the name. It showed no results. I look into my ‘recently opened’ thing and searched and searched. I couldn’t find it. I remembered I emailed it to my regular gmail account. I went there and when I pressed it it said “file not found or you don’t have permission to access this file” I had a mealtdown so thanks!

Thank you VERY MUCH!!!

by Painthorsebaby

I love Google Drive!!! It is a very valuable tool. I use it hourly during the work week. I am able to jot down an idea on my phone, turn it in to a project at home, present it at work, assign it to my students, have them finish it on their computers and grade it all through Google Drive (and Google Classroom). It is impossible for me to forget my thumb drive, cd, or any other archaic storage device, because Google Drive is always there from any of the devices (my phones, iPads, Chrome Books, and generic school desktop computer, or another business computer). I rarely have trouble with formatting issues from one computer to another system and if I do, it’s minor. Where Google Drive fails a five star, in my opinion, is organization... especially when sharing files. I have files shared with me that I have no idea what is in them and if I tried to organize all of it, someone else could unorganize it. I rely on the search bar MOST of the time. But, that means I have to remember what I labeled something three years ago! Then, I will likely find something else equally good from a shared file I didn’t know existed that could have been used LAST week.

by Patches RN

Everyone must remember, I’ve never worked on a computer in my life. I’m a “real newbie” at anything to do with a computer. I promise i will get better. At this point I am “learning on the fly”. I have to learn as I go, you just have to because everything is done via the computer and internet. I can’t even fill out an application on paper anymore, it all has to be done online. Anyway, just wanted to say that I am beginning to pick up a few things along the way and GoogleDrive has honestly helped me so much, especially when it comes to importing my resume. I was lost before on this, but I’m a big girl now and can do it all by myself without having to have my kid show me how to do it EVERY SINGLE TIME!!! My kid is also appreciative of GoogleDrive, just for that alone.
Again, thank you so much for making at least one thing in my life easier. I am having a very tough time right now but GoogleDrive does relieve at least a little bit of stress knowing I can at least do one thing by myself.

by CurlyQTina

Google’s versatility and full functionality have made so much of what I do easier. Previously I used three or four different online services. One service could store images. Another could store text. A third and fourth were used to take notes for research and compose files. When I needed to compile all of the information between those different sources. I would open content in one environment, copy and then paste the content into a completely different environment. Then have to worry about trying to remember which platform my final continent was stored on. Many times I would recreate content because I couldn't find the last version of my file. Or forget where a part of what I had created was located.
With Google’s amazing features and tools, I now know that everything is stored in one location. I can easily work on my files in a single seamless environment. You have made my processes faster and allowed me to cut unnecessary time.

by Imagine_Dragons_#1_Fan

So, I have been using Google Drive — and Google in general — for a very long time now. Even on mobile, I have access to Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets as separate apps. However... there is no mobile app for Google Forms or Google Drawings. This is very annoying, because Google Forms on mobile Google Chrome can get very glitchy (same applies to Google Drawings). It is especially annoying because I use these two services MORE than Google Slides, which does have an app. On top of this, I also cannot create a Google Form or Google Drawing on mobile Google Drive, much less edit one. I would greatly appreciate it if Google Drawings and Google Forms could be made into their own mobile apps. I would even be perfectly fine with editing them in the Google Drive app. As long as I don’t have to use Google Chrome to use these two services on mobile, I’m happy. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

by GravelGrinder64

In my previous office we used Microsoft Office, Outlook and Box for file storage, sharing and editing. Box edit works but is super clunky and hopeless for real time document editing. Google Drive just works better across a shared workspace environment, with Google docs for group editing, commenting, comment resolution, taking, etc. Perhaps even more importantly, Google Drive and Docs and Sheets are a great way to collaborate across operating systems. My office is half Apple and half Windows environment in HQ, and about 30-70 in our international offices. Google is platform agnostic - I use Drive and their office suite from my iPhone, iPad, Windows desktop and iMac. It just works.

The one area where I still prefer Microsoft is for email. Gmail is just not sophisticated enough for enterprise use. We are stuck with it in my office and all use different workarounds. I’ve been waiting for a decade for gmail to have half the functionality of Outlook!

by MeBerlin

I recently switched from Mac to Chromebook, when my 2016 MacBook gave up and I was facing a $1300 setback to replace it. I also had issues with Apple’s Photo App which for example seems to be unable to detect duplicates, and would not give me a good option to prevent my iPhone from getting inundated with all my old pics.
So I canceled my iCloud subscription (which by the way Apple made pretty difficult to do) and transferred all my stuff to Google Drive.
First of all, I was amazed about the power of the search function. While Apple’s search more often than not would not find what I was looking for, here I was able to find old docs that I had completely forgotten about just by limiting the time frame, adding search criteria and the file format I was looking for.
Within an hour I had found all movies and most important, all duplicates, freezing some 50 GB of space.
I also lIke a lot the simplicity of the design, the perfect integration of all other functions, Google Docs, and Google Mail specifically and when it comes to writing’ which is what I mostly do, I just love the fact that you simply cannot forget to safe a doc with Google because it saves the moment you type it.
All in all, I am very very happy that I made the switch and loom forward to further advantages that I sure will find.

by SLBMarrow

I have been using the 15GB google drive for years. I LOVE DRIVE! I can easily access my family’s files from anywhere, on any device. The add on options are helpful when I need them. I love the sharing option and how you can choose the individual’s privileges. It has come in handy many times when my husband is at work and has something to save, that I may need. Or my middle schooler forgot his homework on the table, so I scan it in on his drive, so he can access at school, and I don’t have to cart my toddler in to drop it off. When I need important documents on hand for various things, we just refinanced, the mortgage company loved that I said, “Hold on I have that right here. I’ll email it to you”. Highly recommend the program and so far my friends in the past year or two that use it after my recommendation love it. What would we do without Google Drive!!??

by Tech How

No complaints so far! Been using Google Drive on the web for a long time, and decided to try out their mobile app. Unlike other apps, this doesn’t become finicky and slow when used on older Apple devices running iOS 12. The transitions when switching between folders and menus are snappy, even better than the website! They don’t have to take time to load, they’re just ready when you are. I also like the ability to open pages like Sites and Forms through the in-app browser, instead of redirecting to another app. With that being said, I have a couple of suggestions.

When I want to edit a file, it doesn’t appeal to me that you have to download separate apps and switch between them. It would be nice if it could all be done in one app, like the new Office app by Microsoft.

Secondly, native support for editing plain text files. When working with small amounts of data, I commonly use .txt files. To edit those on the web, I use a separate add-in. But I have no way of editing those files on the mobile app, like other cloud services can. Please consider adding these features!

by The Huge Big Fat Update

it’s really annoying that you can’t upload files in the background, you can only continue uploading while your in the Google Drive app and it still doesn’t even do it when your phone is on sleep. and sometimes it randomly has to retry for no reason, and you should let us share multiple files with people at once instead of doing them individually, also even if you just go out of GoogleDrive and to another app or even just to the home screen, then when you come back to Google Drive even if you’ve only been gone for literally one minute then it’ll either say “waiting” on your already previously partially uploaded file and sometimes it’ll start back at where it was but some very unfortunate times it’ll restart the entire upload for no reason, please fix this and most of all let them upload in the background, please!

by Fond Of Words

I’m retired, but when I worked, I was the guy colleagues came to with questions about MS Word. I wrote books on Word, 2 of which were technical with graphs, charts, tables & statistical formula (with all those Greek symbols). I admired Word for 20+ years! But a problem with Word for me was portability; before leaving for or from work I had always to copy files from the home or work computer to a jump drive—and many were the times I had to travel back to home from work or from work to home to get a file I didn’t think I’d need. Google Docs & Google Sheets brought all that to an end. I was in Portugal last month & opened several Google Docs & Sheets in a flash.

Docs is not quite as sophisticated as Word—& I am especially unhappy when working on a painfully stupid PC keyboard with Docs’ arduous process of inserting special characters (e.g., é as in sautéed, & for and, ° for degrees)—but Docs’ ready access from Chrome makes it terrific.

by Maliikm

GoogleDrive makes it really easy for me to manage and create documents. I save a lot of time by having all of my important documents for business in one place, and I never have to hunt for anything. GoogleDrive does nearly everything Google Drive does on a computer so I never feel like I’m missing out on anything.

I really like that GoogleDrive allows for some level of interoperability with iCloud, which I use to save files from the Microsoft Word app. Once I finish with a document in the Word app and save it to iCloud, I just share the document to Google Drive. If I have any complaints, it’s that there’s no option to save to Google Drive from the Microsoft Word app!

Other peripheral functions like search and quick access are also useful and help save time. File management works well with the right folder structure, and there’s a good level of detail included in the document information summary. Overall a good app 👍🏾

by MJZ810

I recommend the Google drive to everyone and anyone. It is so versatile. I found it Stream Lee useful when I was handling an estate and needed documents repeatedly. Whether I was dealing with insurance companies and banks or lawyers, all I had to do was tap on a file I had scanned and stored on the drive and I easily emailed it over to them while sitting in front of them. I have told others to scan anything and everything they can to be able to access it when needed. I also love doing crafts and keep patterns on the drive. Rather than carrying around papers that can easily be misplaced, I pull up a pattern on my phone or tablet to zoom in an see things clearly and easily. Naturally, it works great for my work files. I can update files without being in front of my laptop. I can back up all of my files and know that they are safe. A difficult question would be why wouldn’t you use Google drive?

by Fdacpano

Using the workspace feature feels redundant on GoogleDrive as workspace should be allowing me to access specific files easily, going from one to another fast and quick. However, when I try to use the files I’ve moved into the workspace, it will bring me to into another google app which does not give me access to the workspace that I created unless I go back to the drive app and relaunch workspace again, which in my opinion, makes workspace feel redundant on the google drive app.

I had GoogleDrive when docs, sheets, and slides were all integrated into GoogleDrive. I think the workspace feature would greatly benefit from this.

Drive is great as a “central hub” and I like how it is organized, but that organization feels (again) redundant if you have to switch between different files and different apps. Drive feels like a middle man that could be cut. And the only reason that it isn’t cut is that the other apps can only view their respective files (i.e. docs can only view documents).

by Jacob's Reviews

As the title very clearly stated, this is a fairly well designed application. However, writing and editing documents is difficult, partially because of the small screen, but also because of the layout of the document. You can't see the margins of the document and you also can't edit them. Changing fonts and other meticulous tasks are also quite difficult based on the size of the options. Lastly, when attaching documents to Gmail from Drive, you cannot select more than one document at a time, which means you have to from Gmail to Drive several times if you want to send more than one document in the same email. Overall, however, I see this as a well designed application, especially for document viewing/editing, and with very few flaws, I definitely recommend this application.

by Gyrvehyhanhcjgebcdjrhzguvd

Okay, I’ll have to admit it... GoogleDrive IS THE BEST! I’m in an acting show where the vocals and songs were used on GoogleDrive and it plays really well! It never pauses randomly like other apps. We originally had to use Facebook manually to navigate our way to the vocals, but with GoogleDrive I have to do 3 steps. 1. Open GoogleDrive . 2. Click what file. 3. Click the song I wanna practice. I had to do 5 steps originally. 1. Go to Facebook. 2. Go to the secret group. 3. Find the tracks. 4– you should know the rest. If I would have to delete GoogleDrive, I would rage and BREAK every device I own.

Summary:
GoogleDrive is really helpful for saving documents unlike Google Docs where you actually have to wait a while for it to save and if you don’t, you have to type it all again. GoogleDrive also loves you saving files, vocals, songs-ANYTHING. There might be problems with songs not loading, but I guess that depends on you’re internet strength. I hope you rate this a 5 star like I did!

by Papa Teter

In my previous office we used Microsoft Office, Outlook and Box for file storage, sharing and editing. Box edit works but is super clunky and hopeless for real time document editing. Google Drive just works better across a shared workspace environment, with Google docs for group editing, commenting, comment resolution, taking, etc. Perhaps even more importantly, Google Drive and Docs and Sheets are a great way to collaborate across operating systems. My office is half Apple and half Windows environment in HQ, and about 30-70 in our international offices. Google is platform agnostic - I use Drive and their office suite from my iPhone, iPad, Windows desktop and iMac. It just works.

The one area where I still prefer Microsoft is for email. Gmail is just not sophisticated enough for enterprise use. We are stuck with it in my office and all use different workarounds. I’ve been waiting for a decade for gmail to have half the functionality of Outlook!

by Therutabega

Yeah, I know that's big praise. But seriously, look at it. This is a full productivity suite I can use hopping back and forth among my phone, work laptop, wife's computer, my own two office machines -- whatevah, I want to see and work on any of my stuff, I jump on the nearest device and go to work. It's free and it works perfectly every time. It's kind of insane we can do all this, actually.

I keep expecting I'll miss MS Office, especially Word's substantially more robust feature set, because I make a lot of documentation professionally and I depended on Office for many years. But it really hasn't happened. I use Google docs for everything and now I really depend on the universal accessibility Drive affords. I'm not transporting any more files on thumb drive, forget it. Life is easier, the birds are chirping. So thanks Google! I know you're making a mint off my small contribution to your Big Data collection. But what the heck, I wasn't using that anyway. And I am using this. Regards.

by M Y S T E R Y ~~~~~

I never give any app five stars, but this one deserves it. The google drive app lets you use google docs, slides, sheets, classroom, and more without WiFi!, say you are on a road trip or a train, or plane, and you want to write, or do something on google classroom. You would usually just go to safari (which on a plane you wouldn’t be able to access) and look up I google classroom. From there, you would click on the link and peruse your business. Using it on the web, can create distractions, and you might not even be able to be access the web if you don’t have WiFi at the time. With GoogleDrive , (which is a great score because it is free!!) lets you access docs no matter where you are! It is an app so it can be accessed without interruptions, and blocks. I personally love GoogleDrive as I am a writer. I simply click on GoogleDrive , and magic! I can write down all of my thoughts and ideas, etc. GoogleDrive is truly amazing and I 100% recommend you purchase it today!

by Shaun M2

It’s been a game-changer for me! I use these tools for virtually all of my professional, personal, and volunteer projects now: from tracking treasurer expenses to writing my novel(s). Having everything easily and instantly available for simultaneous editing on each of my devices at once has been a dream come true.

Compared to other apps? The only other similar app I also use is Box—and Google apps works much more smoothly. Though Box works directly with Microsoft apps, which have many more features, Microsoft’s online apps are SLOW to load and that would make the fast-start and instant-access I’m gushing about in the previous paragraph impossible if I tried to use Box in the same way.

I would presume Dropbox has a similar suite of fast-access apps, but I’ve never tried any others but Google-docs, so I can’t compare.