{"id":26684,"date":"2012-06-29T20:28:09","date_gmt":"2012-06-29T18:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/?p=26684"},"modified":"2025-07-02T01:47:43","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T08:47:43","slug":"google-drive-released-for-ios","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/google-drive-released-for-ios\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Drive released for iOS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Google Drive for iOS\" href=\"http:\/\/google-drive.en.softonic.com\/iphone\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-26689\" title=\"Google Drive\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/sft\/articles\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/06\/6-29-2012-9-22-51-AM.png\" alt=\"Google Drive \" width=\"177\" height=\"178\" \/>Google Drive<\/a> and <a title=\"Google Chrome for iOS\" href=\"http:\/\/chrome.en.softonic.com\/iphone\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google Chrome<\/a> for iOS was announced during the second day of the <a title=\"Google I\/O 2012 recap\" href=\"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/google-io-2012-recap\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google I\/O conference<\/a>. While the iOS counterparts of these two apps can&#8217;t match the features and usability of its Android versions, they can be seen as Google&#8217;s strategy to get as many people on their services as possible.<\/p>\n<p>There are many iOS users that love and use Google&#8217;s services and products so naturally, Google had to release these apps on Apple&#8217;s platform as well. Google Drive has some serious competition in the cloud storage space from the likes of Dropbox, Box, and Apple&#8217;s own iCloud (check out our post on <a title=\"google drive vs everyone else\" href=\"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/google-drive-vs-everyone-else\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google Drive vs Everyone Else<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>So can Google Drive be compelling enough on iOS for users to leave their current cloud service and app? Let&#8217;s find out.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-26688\" title=\"Google Drive on iPad and iPhone\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/sft\/articles\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/06\/2012-06-29-10.39.45.jpg\" alt=\"Google Drive on iPad and iPhone\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/06\/2012-06-29-10.39.45.jpg 500w, https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/06\/2012-06-29-10.39.45-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When you first launch Google Drive, the interface will be familiar immediately if you&#8217;ve used it on Android. There are the same sections to <strong>view all<\/strong>, <strong>starred<\/strong>, <strong>recent<\/strong>, and <strong>offline files<\/strong>. There&#8217;s also a nice search bar at the top that gives the user a faster way to locate files. Dive a little deeper and you&#8217;ll find options to <strong>share<\/strong>, <strong>modify permissions<\/strong>, and <strong>open the current file or document in another application<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-26690\" title=\"Google Drive iOS sharing permissions\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/sft\/articles\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/06\/IMG_0070.png\" alt=\"Google Drive iOS sharing permissions\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/06\/IMG_0070.png 500w, https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/06\/IMG_0070-300x225.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest disappointments for Google Drive on iOS is its <strong>inability to edit documents<\/strong> within the application. You will have to open the document in another application like Apple&#8217;s own iWork apps, in order to make changes. Continuing the theme of disappointments, there is <strong>currently no way for users to even manage their files<\/strong> within the application. Users cannot move the files between folders.<\/p>\n<p>As you can probably already tell, no, Google Drive for iOS will not replace your favorite document editor but it will do just <strong>fine as a document viewer<\/strong>. Google is working hard to include more functionality with it&#8217;s iOS apps, but this first release of Google Drive is definitely a disappointment.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-26691\" title=\"Google Drive open in app\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/sft\/articles\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/06\/IMG_0068.png\" alt=\"Google Drive open in app\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/06\/IMG_0068.png 500w, https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/06\/IMG_0068-300x225.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Google Drive for iOS really doesn&#8217;t do anything to put it above the competition and if users are already invested in another cloud service, there really isn&#8217;t a compelling reason to do so, at least not on the mobile side of things. Google Drive as a web service is still an <strong>amazing collaboration tool<\/strong>. It&#8217;s just too bad Google didn&#8217;t include any collaboration tools in this version. Maybe we&#8217;ll see it in the next release of Google Drive for iOS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google Drive and Google Chrome for iOS was announced during the second day of the Google I\/O conference. While the iOS counterparts of these two apps can&#8217;t match the features and usability of its Android versions, they can be seen as Google&#8217;s strategy to get as many people on their services as possible. There are &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/google-drive-released-for-ios\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Google Drive released for iOS&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2033,"featured_media":26688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[2560],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-26684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-app-subdomain-redirectiongoogle-drive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2033"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333744,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26684\/revisions\/333744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26684"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=26684"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=26684"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=26684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}