PSA: Old Google Drive client is shutting down tomorrow

Last year, Google’s announcement about the shutdown of old Drive client (MAC/PC) took users by surprise, and courtesy of the way some news publications highlighted it, many confused it as the termination of the Cloud storage service itself, instead of the old client application.

While Google initially notified March 12 (2018) as the date of closure, they later extended it to May 12. And now the clock’s ticking, with the old client taking its last breaths, as it officially bids adieu tomorrow.

The company updated their official GSuite Updates blog page a couple of days back reminding the old Drive client users that the shutdown time has arrived.

The old Drive desktop sync client for Mac and PC—a feature officially known as “Google Drive for Mac/PC”—will start to shut down on May 12th, 2018. After May 12th, the sync client may not work for your organization.

The blog post also carries some other relevant information regarding the same. So we have created a gist of the major highlights for you, and they are as follows:

• Users of the old client, including both GSuite as well as non-GSuite users, are recommended to switch to Drive File Stream (former) and Backup and Sync (latter), if they haven’t till now.
• It’s not that the client will be dead immediately (as the process may take several weeks to reach all users), but sync may be terminated for you after May 12. Meaning, changes you make in the local Drive folder may not be reflected to Cloud starting tomorrow itself.
• Those who continue to use the legacy desktop client even after it’s shutdown, will be greeted by the following message to remind them that sync has been disabled:

  

• The local Drive folder (on your desktop) will have to be deleted manually by the user themselves, which can be done by heading to C:\Users\%USER%\Google Drive (Windows) and /Users/$USER/Google Drive (macOS).
• In case, the folder continues to exist on the desktop before signing in to Drive File Stream, the folder will be automatically renamed from “Google Drive” to “Google Drive (Not Syncing)“, and Drive File Stream will display the following notification:

  

  Needless to say, if you are planning to automate the removal of local Drive folder, but somehow pull the trigger after May 12, you need to make sure you delete the “Google Drive (Not Syncing)” folder as well.

To conclude, R.I.P Google Drive (old desktop client) for Mac/PC.

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