Apps
Drive
Files and folders in My Drive, shared drives and your personal space, with sharing, links, versions, previews and the trash.
Drive keeps files and folders. Open it at drive.cactive.com.au or from the app switcher.
Spaces
Everything in Drive belongs to a space:
- An organization. Each member has a My Drive, private until they share something, and the organization has shared drives, owned by the organization and run by their members.
- Your personal space (Personal in the sidebar). It belongs to you, not to any organization: no organization, its owners or admins, its keys or its AI clients can reach it. Only you and the people you share with see anything in it; Caity reads it only if you turn on personal spaces.
Storage counts per space: every version of every file, the trash included. Organizations get their plan's storage (100 GB unless the plan says otherwise); personal spaces get the default plan's personal storage (15 GB unless set). An upload that doesn't fit is refused with what's left.
Access
| Scope | Allows |
|---|---|
drive:read | Opening the organization's files you have access to. |
drive:write | Uploading, organizing, sharing and deleting them, where your access allows it. |
Every member has both: what you can do with a file is decided by your access to it, not your organization role. Your personal space needs no scope; it's yours.
Access to a file or folder is the highest of:
| From | Gives |
|---|---|
| Your My Drive | Owner of everything in it. |
| A shared drive's membership | Its role: Viewer, Commenter, Editor or Manager. |
| A share on the item, or on any folder above it | Viewer, commenter or editor. Shares on a folder reach everything in it. |
| A link setting on the item or a folder above it | The link's role (see Links). |
Viewers open, preview and download; commenters also comment; editors also upload, rename, move, copy, share and move to the trash; owners and shared drive managers also delete forever and empty the trash. Organization owners and admins can manage every shared drive's members (to add themselves, for instance), but get no files by that alone. Files you can't open aren't found at all: Drive doesn't say they exist.
New files
New → Document, Spreadsheet or Presentation makes a blank one in the folder you're in and opens it; New → From template starts from a template instead (see Documents, Sheets and Slides).
Uploading
New → File upload or Folder upload, or drop files and folders onto the page. Folders keep their structure. Files go straight from your browser to storage, in parts for anything over 16 MiB: a failed part is retried on its own, and an upload interrupted by closing the page can be resumed (pick the same file again; only the missing parts are sent). Files can be up to 5 TB.
Uploading a file whose name is already in the folder adds a new version of it. Names are unique per folder, ignoring case.
Finding files
- My Drive, Shared drives, Shared with me (what people shared with you or your teams), Recent (what you opened or changed in the last 60 days), Starred and Trash.
- Search matches every word in names, across what you can open, with filters for type, owner and when it was modified. Documents, spreadsheets and presentations are also found by the words in them, with the line that matched; other files' contents aren't searched yet.
- Grid or list, sorted by name, modified or size (folders first). Select several items with ⌘/Ctrl-click or Shift-click, drag them onto a folder (or a breadcrumb) to move them, or right-click for every action. Press
?for keyboard shortcuts.
Details (i) shows where an item is, its size and type, who owns and changed it, photo details (taken, camera, location), its activity, versions and comments.
Previews and thumbnails
Documents, spreadsheets and presentations open in Documents, Sheets and Slides. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument, CSV and Markdown files offer Open in Documents (or Sheets, or Slides) in their preview, which makes an editable copy beside them. Images, PDFs, video, audio and text open in the browser; other files download. Photos get thumbnails after upload. HEIC and RAW photos, videos and PDFs show an icon for now.
Versions
Every upload of a file is kept as a version, up to 100 per file (the oldest goes first). Editors can download an earlier version, make it current again (a copy, so it counts against storage), or delete it.
Sharing
Share (.) adds people or, in an organization, teams, as viewer, commenter or editor, and shows who has access, including access that comes from a folder above (change that on the folder). In your personal space you share with any person by their email address.
Links
| Setting | Who gets in |
|---|---|
| Restricted | Only people with access. |
| Organization (not in personal spaces) | Every member, with the link's role. |
| Anyone with the link | Anyone, without signing in, to view and download. Optionally with a password. |
Links can expire on a date. Make a new link stops the old one working; Restricted turns it off. Links to files in a personal space only open through the link itself.
Location and camera details
Photos carry where they were taken and with what camera. Remove location and camera details for people who only view (on by default in your personal space) gives viewers, commenters and anyone with a link a cleaned copy: JPEG, PNG and WebP keep their pixels and lose their metadata; TIFF and AVIF are converted to JPEG; HEIC loses its Exif and XMP in place. Videos lose their location in ZIP downloads (up to 50 MB) but aren't handed out on their own while it's on; ZIPs leave out what can't be cleaned and say so. Editors and the owner always get the original.
Personal space activity
Activity log in your personal space lists every change and every access to your files: who opened, listed, downloaded or zipped what, and visits through your links, including wrong passwords. It's kept a year and only you can read it.
Encryption
Each space has its own encryption key (AWS KMS), made with its first file. Every file, version, thumbnail and ZIP of the space is stored encrypted under that key (S3 server-side encryption with a per-file encryption context), so copies of storage, backups included, can't be read without it; Drive's servers use the keys only through storage, and every use is logged with the space and the file. The platform's operators can still change who may use a key; encryption with keys only you hold is planned.
Trash
Items in the trash (with everything in them) are deleted forever after 30 days. Restore puts them back where they were (or at the top of their drive if that's gone), with a number added to the name if it's been taken since. In a shared drive, editors move things to the trash and managers delete forever.
Ownership
In an organization, the owner of a My Drive file can give it to another member (Transfer ownership): it moves to the top of their My Drive and the previous owner keeps editor access. Files in shared drives belong to the drive. Personal files stay yours.
Downloading folders
Download on a folder, or on several items, makes a ZIP in the background (up to 10,000 files and 10 GB) and downloads it when it's ready; it's kept a day.
API and MCP
The API is under /v1/orgs/:orgId/drive for organizations and /v1/me/drive for your personal space (signed-in people only; keys never reach it), with public links under /v1/hooks/drive (see Drive). Keys act for the person who made them. AI clients get drive_search, drive_list, drive_get, drive_read (text files up to 1 MB) and drive_download_url with drive:read, and drive_folder_create, drive_file_write (small text files) and drive_share with drive:write (see MCP tools). They work in the organization's files only.
See Limits for every Drive limit.