Google Drive now supports clipboard keyboard shortcuts but only in Chrome
- maj
- 27
What you need to know
- Google Drive finally allows people to use keyboard shortcuts to use the clipboard.
- The new keyboard shortcuts are only available to people using Google Chrome.
Why it's only available in Chrome is anyone's guess at this point.
Amazingly, Google Drive didn't allow people to use keyboard shortcuts to cut, copy, and paste files until yesterday — and even now, they can only do it if they're using Google's Chrome browser at the time.
The new addition was announced via a blog post and will come as a surprise to many who assumed it was already possible. Well, now it is — but not if you're using Safari or any other browser. It's Google Chome for you, or you'll be right-clicking just like before.
You can now use familiar keyboard shortcuts Ctrl + C (or ⌘ + C on Mac), Ctrl + X and Ctrl + V to copy, cut and paste Google Drive files in your Chrome browser. This saves you time by allowing you to copy one or more files and move them to new locations in Drive, and across multiple tabs, with fewer clicks.
Google Drive will also support the creation of shortcuts rather than duplicating files by adding CTRL to the keyboard shortcut for pasting, and the new shortcuts will work equally fine across both Mac and PC. The copy action will also copy a file's path, ready to be pasted into a document for easy retrieval later.
Additionally, a link to the file and its title will also be captured when copying a file, which allows you to easily paste them into a document or an email.
If you aren't seeing this change on your own Google account right now, hang fire. It should kick in over the next couple of days for anyone who is using a personal Google account in Chrome. It might not be the best Mac web browser for most things, but Chrome just became the best one for moving files in Google Drive!