Google Drive is an incredibly useful service in and of itself, but once you harness the power of its desktop components, you’re more productive than ever.
If you are using a desktop computer, there really is no reason to not install Google Drive desktop components. If you still need to convince, these are in our opinion the best reasons why you should give Google Drive Desktop a shot.
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What is Google Drive “desktop”?
There really isn’t a specific product called Google Drive Desktop. Rather, there are several ways to make Google Drive work without an active internet connection.
The first is a standalone Google Docs extension for Chrome. Once activated, this official Google extension allows you to work with documents in Google Drive whether you have the Internet or not. Quite frankly, this is an important feature and you should definitely enable it.
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The second part of the desktop package is Google Backup and Sync This will automatically sync copies of certain key folders, such as photos and videos, to your Google Drive It also creates a DropBox-style folder on your computer that syncs your Google Drive content. Anything you copy to this folder will sync to the cloud!
Now that we’ve covered how to get Google Drive installed on your desktop, let’s take a look at the reasons why it will increase your productivity.
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You can continue to work when the internet is down
Cloud-based productivity packages are incredibly useful in a world where people need to work from multiple devices and collaborate with a team of remote colleagues However, as soon as the Internet goes off for any reason, you lose access to your work! While Internet connection loss at home can be relatively rare, it is a common problem for mobile Internet users.
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This is also a serious problem if you have to travel a lot. Wi-Fi is not allowed on airplanes. Trains and subways may not have a check-in counter. Not to mention, you may not have Internet access for a while in another country. Therefore, to be productive it is absolutely imperative that your work files are always at hand.
It’s easy to share large files
Even in the era of broadband access, most email services have fairly tight file attachment size limits. Not the best situation when you need to share high quality images, audio, or other large media files.
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With a synced Google Drive folder on your computer, you can easily share large files simply by storing them in a dedicated folder on your computer. Anyone you have given permission can sync it with their computer or access it in the cloud. Google Drive will do the rest.
Storing backups can keep you up and running
If you are using the Startup & Sync app, you can save whatever you want to your local folder and sync it. Assuming you have enough storage space. This can include any type of file.
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For example, you can sync hard drive backup images and simply set up your backup software to sync folder on your drive. Since you can specify which folders to sync on each of your Windows or macOS computers, you don’t have to worry about junk files on each computer. So if your computer gets stolen or your hard drive gets wiped out, you can get your data back no matter what.
It makes collaboration easier
No one person is an island, and most of the work (remote or otherwise) is done as a team these days. Google Drive, along with subcomponents like Google Docs, makes it easy to collaborate on documents. You can comment on documents, always see the latest version when syncing or connecting, and even assign specific tasks to other team members with whom you share items.
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By the way, Google Drive has robust sharing settings, which means you and your coworkers can only share content with those who need access.
Scan documents and archive them as a team
The dream of a paperless office remains just a dream. This means that many paper documents have yet to be digitized. There is actually a pretty cool way to get your team to collectively digitize paper records using this Google technology.
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The Google Drive mobile app has a built-in document scanner Every member of your team just needs a smartphone, the Google Drive app, and access to the Google Drive shared folder. They can then create scanned documents in the field and save them in this folder.
If you have this folder synced to your computer, it means that all scanned data will automatically download and accumulate on that computer. Ready to use for any purpose.
Storage upgrades with Google One
While anyone can use these productivity gimmicks for free, a standard Google Drive account only has 15GB of storage. The storage pool is shared by services such as Google Drive and Gmail. This means that one of the most effective ways to improve productivity with Google Drive for desktops is to update shared storage with Google One
Although it will cost you a few dollars, it is actually one of the cheapest cloud storage you can get. For $ 1.99 per month, you can get an additional 100 GB of storage up to $ 299.99 per month for 30 TB of storage.
This opens up many possibilities, including simple backups of large amounts of data and team projects that require large amounts of fast and reliable cloud storage. Moving to a cloud-based tool like Google Drive and integrating it with your desktop is a productivity gold mine if you’re ready to open up to thinking outside the box.
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