Google Drive Desktop App Shutting Down in March of Next Year

Google is apparently shutting down its Drive desktop app for uploading files to your cloud storage account from Macs and PCs next March.

According to a new post on Google’s blog, support for Google Drive desktop will be cut off from December 11 and it will shutdown on March 12 next year. Users who are still using the drive app will start seeing notifications in October telling them drive for Mac/PC is “going away.”

“With this launch, Google Drive for Mac/PC is officially deprecated,” reads the report. “It will no longer be supported starting on December 11th, 2017, and it will shut down completely on March 12th, 2018. We encourage you to use Drive File Stream. As an alternative to or in addition to installing Drive File Stream, you can upgrade to the new version of Drive for Mac/PC, called Backup and Sync.”

Google Drive on the web is staying, but consumers are being encouraged to install the replacement Drive app, called Backup and Sync, which Google launched in July as a client for backing up and syncing photos and files. It also replaced the Google Photos uploader app.

Google has also enabled the support for offline access in the Drive File Stream application. Users just need to pre-select the files or folders which they wish to use without being connected to the internet and the app intelligently stores them on the user’s computer storage.

This is purely meant for the professionals and is currently being beta tested by some G Suite Enterprise, Business and Education customers. As its name suggests, the Drive File Stream is an advanced cloud synchronizing solution that is mostly based on live streaming contents directly from the web.

If you want to get sorted right away, you can download and install Backup & Sync right now to make the transition before Drive for desktop is officially ended on March 12, 2018.

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