Google has just announced an expected improvement to its Drive service, now allowing instant playback of videos as soon as they are downloaded to the web version. The arrival of this feature already promises a significant advance in the user experience of the platform.
With the new Google Drive update, Google completely eliminates the waiting time between downloading and reading. The new version is already available for users in Rapid Release domains. General deployment will begin on January 2, 2025gradually affecting all users.
This update is a continuation of recent improvements to Google Drive, which had already introduced a more modern and smoother video player last October. The new design, reminiscent of that of Apple TV+, comes with features like automatic transcription and optimized loading times.
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Videos will be able to play much faster on Google Drive
In its Workspace blog post, Google did not detail the technical changes enabling this performance improvement. Nevertheless, initial user feedback confirms a clear improvement in reading speed on certain Workspac accountse, suggesting a gradual deployment of the function.
The feature will be available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, as well as users with a personal Google account. Availability on Google Drive mobile applications has not yet been specified.
In addition, Google also announced changes to Google Groups keyboard shortcuts. In an effort to improve accessibility, new shortcuts will be implemented. Users will be able to continue to use old and new shortcuts until early 2025date from which only the new ones will be functional.
These keyboard shortcut changes will take effect on January 13, 2025, provided the rollout is completed. As with the Drive update, these changes will affect all Workspace, Workspace Individual users and personal Google accounts. It now remains to be seen when these new features will be available to everyone. As usual, the rollout could take some time, with Google generally favoring a gradual rollout to ensure the features don't contain any major bugs.
