18 New Languages for Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides

Google Drive lets you store and access your files anywhere -- on the web, your computer, your phone, or on the go. Whether you’re presenting slides in a boardroom in São Paulo or negotiating a Japanese contract in Tokyo, Google Drive speaks your language: 65 of them, to be exact, with the addition of 18 new ones today:

Afrikaans, Amharic, Basque, Chinese (Hong Kong), Estonian, French (Canada), Galician, Icelandic, Khmer, Lao, Malaysian, Nepali, Persian, Sinhalese, Spanish (Latin America), Swahili, Urdu, Zulu

You can switch back and forth as often as you like, and many of these languages are also supported by Drive’s spellchecker.

Love to collaborate? No matter which Drive app you’re using -- Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms -- you can work in real time in any language you choose while your fellow collaborators use another language.

To try Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides in another language, you can switch by:

1. Clicking the gear icon in the upper right, then select Settings. 
2. Under General, select a language from the drop-down menu in the Language section. 
3. Click Save. You’re done!

To change the language for Google Drive for mobile, go to your device’s language settings. If you don’t yet have Drive for mobile, you can visit the Google Play or Apple App Store to get the Google Drive app.

Posted by Ian Hill, Project Manager, Google Localization

A smoother Drive app for Android

The process of creating and accessing your stuff shouldn’t be, well...a process. Today, the Drive app for Android is getting several improvements to make creating and accessing your stuff on-the-go even easier.

To help you find the content you care about, Drive files will now be displayed in a clean, simple card-style. You can swipe between files to see large previews that let you quickly review and discover the information you’re looking for. And if you want to keep some Drive files on your Android device, you’ll now be able to “download a copy” from the actions menu inside settings.

The updated Drive for Android app also gives you to a way to keep track of important paper documents like receipts, letters, and billing statements. Simply click “Scan” from the Add New menu, snap a photo of your document, and Drive will turn the document into a PDF that’s stored for safekeeping. And because Drive can recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, a simple search will retrieve the scanned document later. No more frantic scrambling through drawers looking for a receipt or digging through your pockets to find that business card -- just scan, upload and search in Drive.

The editing experience in Google Sheets has also gotten some improvements: now you can adjust font types and sizes for a spreadsheet and tweak the cell text colors and cell alignment right from the app. Plus, the Drive app comes with Cloud Print support so you can print anything from Drive with a Cloud Ready printer -- perfect if you need to, say, print that extra resume right before a job interview.

Get the Google Drive app today on Google Play and circle us on Google+ for continued updates. 

Posted by Denis Teplyashin, Software Engineer

Bringing it all together: 15 GB now shared between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos

Life gets a bit easier when your Google products work well together—whether that’s inserting a Drive file into an email or sharing a photo from Drive on Google+. As this experience becomes more seamless, separate storage doesn’t make as much sense anymore. So instead of having 10 GB for Gmail and another 5 GB for Drive and Google+ Photos, you’ll now get 15 GB of unified storage for free to use as you like between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos.

With this new combined storage space, you won’t have to worry about how much you’re storing and where. For example, maybe you’re a heavy Gmail user but light on photos, or perhaps you were bumping up against your Drive storage limit but were only using 2 GB in Gmail. Now it doesn’t matter, because you can use your storage the way you want.

We’ll also be making updates to the Google Drive storage page, so you can better understand how you’re using storage space. Simply hover over the pie chart to see a breakdown of your storage use across Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos. And if you need more storage, this is your place to upgrade, with plans starting at $4.99/month for 100 GB.

Pro tip: This change means you’re no longer limited to a 25 GB upgrade in Gmail—any additional storage you purchase now applies there, too.

These changes to Google Drive storage will roll out over the next couple of weeks. Google Apps users will also be getting shared storage, so visit the enterprise blog to learn more.

Posted by Clay Bavor, Director of Product Management

Access Google Keep with the new Chrome app

Last month, Google Keep launched to help you quickly jot down ideas and keep track of things while on the go with your Android device or on the web. Today, with the launch of a new Chrome app, Google Keep is even easier to access on your computer using Chrome.

The Google Keep Chrome app launches in its own window, so you can create notes, cross out your to-do lists, and attach photos to tasks while you work on other things. And if you don’t have an internet connection, don’t fret: the Chrome app works offline because we all know that ideas (big and small) can be sparked at any time.

You can visit the Chrome Web Store to add the app today (use the link, you won’t find it in search)!

Happy note taking!

Posted by Eddy Mead, Software Engineer

Bringing people together in Drive

More often than not, you need to work with others to get things done. Today, working together in Drive is getting even easier with new profile pictures and one-click group chat.

Now when you open a file in Drive, you’ll see the profile pictures of other viewers at the top instead of just their names, making it easy for you to do a quick scan of who else is in the file. You can hover over a photo to see details about the viewer and add them to your circles on Google+ — all without ever leaving Drive.

In addition, you can now start a group chat with just one click. Simply select the new chat button at the top right and a chat box will appear, making it easy for you to quickly message everyone in the file. 

These new features will roll out over the next day or two, and we’ll be adding support for more file types (like Google Sheets) soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, visit our Google+ page and let us know what your favorite anonymous character is!

Posted by Eric Zhang, Software Engineer (Anonymous Monkey)

Google Keep—Save what’s on your mind

(Cross-posted from the Android Blog)

Every day we all see, hear or think of things we need to remember. Usually we grab a pad of sticky-notes, scribble a reminder and put it on the desk, the fridge or the relevant page of a magazine. Unfortunately, if you’re like me you probably often discover that the desk, fridge or magazine wasn’t such a clever place to leave the note after all...it’s rarely where you need it when you need it.

To solve this problem we’ve created Google Keep. With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand.

If it’s more convenient to speak than to type that’s fine—Keep transcribes voice memos for you automatically. There’s super-fast search to find what you’re looking for and when you’re finished with a note you can archive or delete it.

Changing priorities isn’t a problem: just open Keep on your Android phone or tablet (there’s a widget so you can have Keep front and center all the time) and drag your notes around to reflect what matters. You can choose the color for each note too.

Pro tip: for adding thoughts quickly without unlocking your device there's a lock screen widget (on devices running Android 4.2+).

Google Keep is available on Google Play for devices running Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich and above. You can access, edit and create new notes on the web at http://drive.google.com/keep and in the coming weeks you'll be able to do the same directly from Google Drive.

Posted by Katherine Kuan, Software Engineer

Preview files in Google Drive

It may sound obvious, but sometimes the best way to find something is to start looking. Beginning today, Google Drive will let you quickly preview more than 30 file types and quickly flip between files until you find the one you want.

You’ll see the new preview automatically if you open a photo, video, or PDF. To see a preview of a Google document, right-click on the file name and select “preview.” Once the preview window is open, you can click on the arrows on either side to flip to other files. And right from within the preview, you can watch video files or scroll through multi-page documents.

You can select and copy text from the preview -- even for a PDF or Microsoft Word document -- or use the zoom buttons to see a file in more detail. Each file preview also gives you one-click access to share, download, print or open a file for editing.

This feature will roll out over the next few days.

Posted by: Ian Kilpatrick, Google Drive Engineer