Google Drive app codes reveal offline file encryption feature

Google Drive is finally getting a feature that most users have been hoping to get since months – encrypting individual files. Although there’s no public announcement or confirmation, a recent teardown by XDA Developers has hinted this feature to be coming soon. It has been found in the codes of Google Drive app version 2.20.441.06.40 that the platform will let you encrypt Drive files saved on-device. It will also let you download and open encrypted files in Drive.

One of the developers, Alessandro Paluzzi, also tweeted the screenshots of the feature in action. From the images, it can be deciphered that the encryption feature could come as a toggle button inside the Settings of the app. Once the feature is enabled, the files that are downloaded to the device will appear with a small lock icon next to the one that indicates its availability offline.

Also read: Google Drive has a very annoying problem but it has now been fixed

It has been speculated that enabling the option will probably delete the all documents currently downloaded through Drive. But that is said to be one of the price that you may have to pay for better privacy.

A couple of weeks ago, the search giant fixed one of the most annoying issues on Google Drive. Google Drive has long supported Word, PowerPoint, Excel documents and all these documents always launch automatically in preview mode and users cannot make any changes to them. Now, if you double click on a Microsoft Office document, be it .docx, .doc, .ppt, .pptx, .xls, .xlsx or .xlsm, that’s stored on the Drive, it will open in editing mode in default.

Google explained in its blog post that the only exception to this new rule applies to Office files that are password protected. These will continue to open in preview mode.