Google has sent an email to users of its Drive cloud storage platform stating that it is making changes to how trashed files are treated. The company said that starting from 13 October 2020, any file that is put into Google Drive’s “My Drive” trash folder will be deleted after 30 consecutive days of being in the folder.
“We are writing to let you know that starting October 13, 2020, Google Drive is making a change so that its trash behaves more consistently with the rest of Google applications (such as Gmail) with regards to automatic deletion,” Google said in an email to customers. “This means that any file that is put into Google Drive’s ‘My Drive’ trash will begin to be automatically deleted after 30 consecutive days in the trash.”
Google added that items in the trash folder will still continue to consume quota and your storage will still continue to be shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. From 13 October, any files already in a user’s trash will remain there for 30 days before being automatically deleted.
These changes affect items that are trashed from any device and any platform, and there is no impact to Backup and Sync behaviour. “You can always restore files from trash before the 30-day time window,” Google said. “If you are using Google Drive on Android or iOS, please update to the latest versions so you can be updated on the most recent in-app notifications.”
New features for Chrome
Google is also working on changes for its Chrome browser that will reduce its battery usage, according to a recent report. This system will work similarly to battery-saving features on modern operating systems, with websites adapting what content they display to users who are using the battery-saver mode.
An example of how sites could implement battery-saving measures is by informing Chrome that it can run non-essential javascript tasks at a slower speed than would usually be the case. This feature is currently available for testing through Origin Trial, and Google will reportedly experiment with this feature on Chrome v86 and v87.
