Catch up on every new feature added to Google G Suite for Education in February 2019.

New look Google Drive App

If you are using the Google Drive app on your phone (And really, who isn’t?) then you may already have seen the material redesign of the app to match it more closely with the clean, fresh feel that the rest of the G Suite apps have. It started rolling out on March 18th but can take up to 15 days for everyone to get the update.

Some of the improvements include:

  • Full-width search bar
    • Removing the small magnifying glass and adding in the larger search bar just like on your computer.
  • New Home tab and bottom navigation
    • A Home tab will show you your most used and recently used files.
    • The bottom navigation bar will allow you to look at your shared documents and folders easily.
  • My Drive and Team Drives tabs
    • Tabs at the top to allow you to easily switch between your Drive and any Team Drives.
  • Easier account switching
    • The feature to switch accounts will look just like it does when using your computer, an icon in the top right corner.

New Drive Priority Page

In Drive, you will soon see the new Priority button. On this page, it will show you what Google believes are the most relevant documents to you right now based on various signals from your activity.

This page will also include a new feature called Workspaces where you can group together multiple files related to the same project from your Drive and any Team Drives even if you don’t have ownership of a file. This is a great addition to help project work making it easier to manage your work.

This new feature will start to be rolled out from April 1st.

Set start times and repeating alerts in Tasks

We know Tasks isn’t a widely used app here at Barton but these new features make it so much easier to give yourself a to do list and keep to it.

Originally tasks were just a list of things you needed to do but now you can add a date and time to your task which when hit, will send you a notification reminder to make sure you complete the task.

You can now add repeating tasks to remind yourself to do something every day, week, month or year.

Now easier to insert images into cells in Sheets

It is now easier to add images into individual cells in Google Sheets. You used to be able to add images that were from a website or Google Image search into a cell but now you can add an image from your computer or your Google Drive to a cell.

  • Via the menu bar at the top of a Sheet:
    • Insert > Image > Image in cell
  • Select image from Drive or upload one.