How to Install and Use Google Drive for Desktop

hi there jamie here today at teachers  tech hope you're having a great day today   today i want to show you how to install and set up  google drive for desktop now if you haven't used   this before or haven't heard of this can  save you a lot of time what it does is puts a   folder on your computer that directly connects  to the cloud to your google drive so you don't   have to open up your browser and log into google  drive to access your files it's always up to   date on your computer the other thing i like  about this if you're working in microsoft too   if they're on your computer when you open up  those files that maybe are stored in google drive   they'll open up right away to the correct  microsoft app if they're on your computer   so today i'm going to go through installing and  the setup of how to use google drive for desktop i'll put the link to this download page for google  desktop here down below in the video description   you can see it's either going to be for pc  or mac i'm on my windows computer here today   i'm going to go ahead and click the download  it's a fairly quick download and then we'll

start the install process i'm just going  to go ahead and open it right from here   and so we'll get ready for our install i'm  just going to say yes to this and now at   this point and add an application shortcut to  your desktop you can have it there i'm going to   say yes for this and install you can see it runs  through very quickly to get it on your computer   so once it gets to this point here we need to sign  in with a browser so i'm going to go ahead and   connect it to this account right here hit sign in  and it's success uh so where is this going to show   up well let me open up my explorer window here  down below i'm going to go and just open this up

and what i want to point out to you now is that we  have this google drive here i'm going to go ahead   and open up this google drive and then go to my  drive and you can see all these files so where are   these coming from i'm just going to change this  window and do a little side by side here so this   is my google drive online if you take a look at  this folder here linking sheets and spreadsheets   and google sheets this is over here if i open this  up here you see these different ones if i open   this up you see the same ones now there's some  choices that you can be making between streaming   and mirroring and i'm going to show you why you  might want to choose either those in a bit   but it's very easy to use this google drive for  desktop because all you have to do now anything i   drag into here will automatically get synced with  here so then i can be logging in somewhere else   on a different computer and i could just go and  grab from my normal uh logging into the browser so   let me show you how these things can sync now  so if i go ahead and you notice i have google   drive up here because i have it in my quick access  and i also have it down here it's the same thing   just two different places to get it but let's  say i was going to drag a picture out of here so

right out of these pictures i'm going to go to  camera roll if i go and take this here and i'm   just going to drag it down into where it said my  drive uh underneath google drive here so if then   i'm going to go ahead and open it notice now that  it's right here so if i go over to my browser and   here it is so the same picture just got updated  it's synced here so i can open up the picture   here and it is also here now if i go and create  a file from here so let's see if i was creating   a google slides present presentation i could go  ahead and make this and i'll just give this a   little test name here and i'm going to go and just  put a 0 here so it comes up right at the top of it   just like this and so at this point if i  go back to my google drive you're gonna see   that this should be in my google drive over here  i'll just give it a quick refresh here it is   zero test now over here and sometimes it can take  a moment or so but before the syncing is going in   but even if i just go in and then back out you  can see here it is zero test and if i go ahead   and open it from here it opens in you can see it  open in the browser over here because that's what

it was created in now if i was creating something  like microsoft word so i have a microsoft word   file that i would save into here if i go to  my google drive here you can see that it is   right here and the issue would be if you want  to keep on working in microsoft word from here   if i go ahead and open i'm not going to get  it to microsoft word this is just going to be   converting it into using google docs but if i open  it over here now if it's saved this is going to   be saved in google drive it's still going to open  the microsoft app on my computer so thinking about   you can just drag things over into the folders if  i go ahead and make a folder uh if i was making   a folder over here so if i go just go new folder  and you can see i'll just call this test like this   and i'm going to go back over here to my google  drive and i'll just do a quick refresh here is   that folder and then i can be moving things over  here and it's going to reflect over on this one so   if i go to test over here now sometimes it takes  a second i'll just go back out again and in oops   click the wrong one go back and you can see there  it is right now so it just took a few seconds to   sync over and now let's say i moved over here but  is reflecting over here so i hope this helps you   understand how the files are being moved around  how you can store you know i gave the example   of microsoft but it can be other files too if  you're using photoshop and you needed to open up   a photoshop file it could be saved in here  and it will just open up photoshop to do that   so let me go over now some of the settings  that you we can be using in this google drive   for desktop top app such as mirroring versing  versus the streaming to access the settings on

the google drive app just go down to the bottom of  the computer bottom right hand corner you can see   here is the google drive app i'm going to open  this up this shows me the activity of the things   that i was just showing you from creating or  moving the files and how everything is syncing   there are no notifications uh to let  you know in this case you can see this   uh can't the action couldn't be completed and it  will just have different notifications there where   i want to go to though is this right here so i'm  going to hit this little gear to go to preferences

inside preferences uh you can go ahead and  add more files to our folders to backup   on your computer so this is a great feature if you  have important files you just want to make sure   that you have a place you're backing up to the  cloud that's not automatically in that my drive   that folder that was syncing with google drive  that was automatically added at the beginning   so if i go add a folder and let's say something  in my documents here and let's for example   camtasia all my different videos that i make using  camtasia i want to make sure that these are saved   uh to the cloud i could go ahead and select this  and this will be synced with google drive if it   was going to be images and videos well then i  would probably look at doing backup to google   photos you have a choice there and then all you'd  have to do is hit done at this point and then it's   going to sync so depending on how much time or  how many files or how big it is it could take some   time to sync everything back and forth now what  i want to point out is if we go to google drive

here when we originally set up a google drive it's  under stream files and this is going to save space   on your computer uh because when you go  ahead and select stream files store all of my   my drive files in the cloud only access files  from the virtual drive on your computer now if you   wanted them actually saved on your computer also  we could put mirroring to the mirror files here   the one thing to know when you do choose mirror  files this is going to take up more room on your   computer because they are stored there but  if you weren't online you would still be able   to access those files uh from here because  they're saved on your computer so you choose   what one would work best for you if you're worried  about not having enough space on your computer

if not you could go ahead and mirror the other  things i just want to point out right up here   notice that i can add another account right  through this point so if you did want a second   gmail account google drive account you can go  ahead and do that if i go to the gear again

you're going to see a few different options  so this is where i can disconnect the account   that i'm set up with you can see this is the  one that i started and logged in with uh if   this is a good feature to have on if you are  using microsoft word you can see if someone   else is editing a shared microsoft office file  so if you tur check that would be on here   so the other thing with this one do you want the  letter g as your google drive i kind of also leave   it the same but if you wanted a different letter  maybe you're using the g drive as something else   you can go ahead and select it from right here  there's some other uh the other different settings   that you can go through and check out here to kind  of get everything just the way that you want so go   back to level if there's anything to add to backup  right through here so i hope you like this little   kind of demo of setting up how to install the  google drive for desktop app and kind of how   it works with the streaming or maybe you want  to choose mirroring i find this saves me a lot   of time to have this on my computer i have it on  my mac also then i can just be working back and   forth from my computer without having to go to the  web and open up google drive and logging in there   each time so let me know if this was if there's  any problems with anything down below in the   descriptions and what else you're wanting to look  at i did have a different video about using google   drive with just the online i'll put a link to  that one down below and in the card above thanks   for watching this time on teachers tech i'll see  you next time with more tech tips and tutorials