Google Drive launches shortcuts to better find you in files

Shortcuts in Google Drive are now available to all users. This feature is designed for better organization of shared files. In particular, it saves them from copying them to different shared folders when needed. Google warns that all duplicate files, i.e. those located in multiple locations on My Drive, will be deleted from September 30. Descriptions.

After several months of testing, Google recently announced the general distribution of shortcuts in Google Drive. If you think about keyboard shortcuts that get you going faster right away, that’s not the point. this Driving shortcutse is more like what you create in Windows to access a file from several places without having to duplicate it.

This new feature offers two advantages: on the one hand, it prevents you from creating custom links to send to other users to access a particular file. And on the other hand, it allows avoid multiple copies of the same file on google drive in case you want to put it in multiple shared folders. On this second point, Google wants to avoid overloading its servers with unnecessary duplicate files.

Remove all duplicates in Google Drive starting September 30, 2020

For this, the firm says that from September 30, 2020, for example, if the same file is located in different locations of your personal Drive because you have placed it in several shared folders intended for different groups of people, these duplicates will be deleted and automatically replaced with shortcuts which points directly to the source file.

Google Drive shortcuts are visible to anyone who has access to the shared folder containing the shortcut. However, the owner has the ability to restrict access to certain people only. Finally, Google is changing the button to make the transition easier “Add to Drive” by (right click) in context menu “Add shortcut to Drive”i.e. currently you can create shortcuts instead of duplicate files.