What you need to know
- Code inside Google’s Drive app on Android shows it’s working on bringing a new “category” system to users.
- Users will be able to customize and display their important categories on the Drive “home” tab for easy discovery.
- The code also showed users that they could choose which categories a saved file or document on Drive should contain in a three-dot menu.
It looks like Google is working on introducing a new category system to Drive that should make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for.
The feature was discovered by AssembleDeBug (TheSpAndroid), and the post says that “Categories” will appear on the home tab of the Drive app (via Android Police). Users will soon be able to find their categories as rounded icons in a row at the top of the app’s welcome page. Moreover, the three-dot menu is said to allow users to “Manage Categories” for customization purposes.
In the app code, by tapping this option, users will be able to decide which categories should quickly appear at the top.
Another discovery shows that users can decide which “category” their documents and files should fall into. The app’s code shows that tapping the three-dot menu on a document will soon turn on another “Manage Categories” option. From there, users should be able to select all the categories that apply to their files.
There were twelve categories observed in the Drive app’s Android code:
- A car
- Banking
- Costs
- Home
- IDS
- Insurance
- Medical
- Pets
- School
- Taxes
- Travel
- Work
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While the discovery was made in the code of the Android app, AssembleDeBug states that the feature will be coming to the web and iOS devices. Additionally, they speculate that Personal and Workspace accounts should pick up the categories whenever Google finishes.
While we wait for this new categorization method, Google recently rolled out an update to Drive that improves the playback experience of uploaded videos. The company’s solution, which they call “DASH,” works to adjust the quality of your stored content based on your network speed. Google also detailed the improved search experience, which until now was only available for iOS devices.
New filters like File Type, Owner, and Last Modified should be available on Android, but Google hasn’t said when.