Google shutting down Google Drive for PCs and Macs, to replace it with ‘Drive File Stream’

The support for Drive will end on December 11 and will shut down completely on March 12, 2018.

In the process of launching Drive File Stream, Google is now shutting down Google Drive for PCs and Macs.

Launched to early adopters in March, Drive File Stream is a new desktop application that allows you to quickly access all of your Google Drive files on demand, directly from your computer.

This would mean that no hard drive space is used and time taken for file syncing will also come down.

Google has announced that starting September 6, settings for Drive File Stream will be visible in the admin console. However, these settings won’t go into effect for your users until September 26, when Drive File Stream becomes generally available.

“With this launch, Google Drive for Mac/PC is officially deprecated,” the company said. The support for Drive will end on December 11 and will shut down completely on March 12, 2018.

And while it is launching Drive File stream, Google says that users can upgrade to the new version of Drive for Mac/PC, called Backup and Sync.

If a user is running both Drive File Stream and Backup and Sync on the same machine, they’ll be prompted to stop syncing My Drive with Backup and Sync in order to save disk space, according to the update. The company also notes has also said that users can choose to install Backup and Sync, either as an alternative to or in addition to the Drive File Stream enterprise software.

Google launched Backup and Sync for PCs and Macs earlier this year. While Backup and Sync is Google’s consumer sync client, organizations can use it, too.

According to a TechCrunch report, Google had announced in July that it would consolidate its desktop file sync applications for Google Drive and Google Photos for consumers into a single new app called “Backup and Sync”.

This was being done ahead of its plan to end support for the older Google Photos and Google Drive client apps for Mac and PC.

According to the report, the key difference between the consumer application and the enterprise version is the option for administrative control.