Google Workspace Changes

Thumbnail previews now appear when hovering over a video's progress bar in Google Drive, allowing quick navigation.

Starting July 22, 2025, when hovering over a newly uploaded video’s progress bar in Google Drive, users will see a thumbnail preview that enables quick viewing and navigation to specific parts of the video. This enhancement aims to improve productivity and the overall video viewing experience within Google Drive by allowing users to easily find specific moments in their videos. This feature is only available for newly uploaded videos.

Google Drive for Desktop has received a refreshed user interface to centralize file management and display important information.

Google has introduced significant improvements to Google Drive for desktop, featuring a refreshed user interface. This update aims to provide desktop users with a single, centralized location to easily manage all their Drive files. The new view will display crucial information, including sync activity, notifications, and shared files, offering a more streamlined and efficient file management experience.

Expanded Information Rights Management (IRM) controls for Google Drive, allowing file owners and shared drive managers to restrict printing, copying, and downloading for editors.

Google Drive's Information Rights Management (IRM) feature, which prevents downloading, copying, and printing of documents, has been enhanced. Previously, IRM controls could be applied by individual file owners only for viewers and commenters, and by admins for editors. Now, individual file owners and shared drive managers can also apply these printing, copying, and downloading restrictions to users with edit permissions, giving more granular control over sensitive content. Editors and owners can still edit the document, but content copying and pasting is limited to within the document itself.

Google Drive Events API is now available in Developer Public Preview, enabling real-time notifications for Drive item changes.

The Google Drive Events API is now integrated with the Workspace Events API and is available in Developer Public Preview. This enables third-party developers to create subscriptions on Drive items and receive real-time notifications via Cloud Pub/Sub when those resources change. This offers a more reliable and feature-rich way of receiving events compared to existing watch methods, supporting events such as files being added, moved, edited, trashed, or when an access proposal is created or resolved.

Gems, custom AI experts, are now available directly in the side panel of Google Drive, allowing users to leverage customized AI assistance without switching applications.

Gems, which are custom AI experts designed to help complete specific goals, tasks, and workflows, are now integrated directly into the side panel of Google Drive. This integration allows users to utilize both custom and pre-made Gems, such as a writing editor or sales pitch ideator, within the Google Drive application. The feature aims to enhance efficiency by minimizing repetitive prompting and enabling tailored AI assistance for various tasks like creating content, generating sales interactions, or reviewing documents, all without needing to navigate away from the current application.